A new report shows that B2B sales teams increasingly use AI to improve efficiency and close deals.
Commissioned by LinkedIn and conducted by Ipsos, the survey included 1,250 sales professionals and found that AI is now a key part of sales practices.
Here’s what marketers need to know.
AI Adoption on the Rise
88% of sales professionals use AI weekly, and 56% use it daily. This trend reflects changes in the sales field, where teams must manage complex buying processes.
Karin Kimbrough, LinkedIn’s Chief Economist, notes that companies using AI gain a competitive advantage.
“Companies integrating AI are gaining a competitive edge,” says Kimbrough in the report. “Teams that don’t embrace AI will fall behind.”
Microsoft’s Future of Work report also shows that sales professionals see significant productivity increases from AI.
Key Drivers Of Investment
98% of sales executives plan to invest more in AI this year. They’ll focus on:
Sales intelligence
Sales enablement
AI-powered CRM tools
Methodology Note: Ipsos surveyed sales professionals in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, India, and Singapore, focusing on mid-market (200–999 employees) and enterprise (1,000+ employees) sectors spanning tech, finance, manufacturing, professional services, and other industries.
Top Three Impact Areas
Sellers exceeding their targets are 2.5 times more likely to use AI daily than those not meeting their goals.
Researchers found three main ways AI improves sales:
Finding Leads
38% say AI helps to identify leads faster and more accurately.
Sellers save at least 1.5 hours weekly using AI for lead research.
Personalized Messages
AI tools enable faster and more tailored outreach campaigns.
Sellers using AI saw a 28% increase in responses.
Sales Efficiency
AI streamlines data entry and scheduling in CRM systems.
Nearly 69% of sellers say AI shortens their sales cycle by about one week and helps them close more deals.
Looking Ahead
Dan Shapero, LinkedIn COO, advises companies to “start small” and focus on delivering immediate wins as a foundation for long-term AI adoption.
This approach resonates with the growing number of sales executives (39%) who feel “highly confident” about their readiness for future challenges.
In practical terms, sales teams can begin by:
Automating routine tasks like updating CRM records or lead qualification.
Leveraging real-time insights for targeted outreach (e.g., tracking job changes or company news).
Experimenting with generative AI to craft more engaging prospect messages.
Regularly training teams on new tools to reduce resistance and smooth adoption.
Dan Shapero, COO at LinkedIn, states:
“It’s too early to know what your AI strategy is. I think the question you ask yourself is, “What is my AI win?”. What’s the one thing that I can do with my team right now that’s going to create value over the next six months? Because the world is changing so quickly, it’s one of these moments to start small, to go big over time.”
Google researchers introduced a method to improve AI search and assistants by enhancing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) models’ ability to recognize when retrieved information lacks sufficient context to answer a query. If implemented, these findings could help AI-generated responses avoid relying on incomplete information and improve answer reliability. This shift may also encourage publishers to create content with sufficient context, making their pages more useful for AI-generated answers.
Their research finds that models like Gemini and GPT often attempt to answer questions when retrieved data contains insufficient context, leading to hallucinations instead of abstaining. To address this, they developed a system to reduce hallucinations by helping LLMs determine when retrieved content contains enough information to support an answer.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems augment LLMs with external context to improve question-answering accuracy, but hallucinations still occur. It wasn’t clearly understood whether these hallucinations stemmed from LLM misinterpretation or from insufficient retrieved context. The research paper introduces the concept of sufficient context and describes a method for determining when enough information is available to answer a question.
Their analysis found that proprietary models like Gemini, GPT, and Claude tend to provide correct answers when given sufficient context. However, when context is insufficient, they sometimes hallucinate instead of abstaining, but they also answer correctly 35–65% of the time. That last discovery adds another challenge: knowing when to intervene to force abstention (to not answer) and when to trust the model to get it right.
Defining Sufficient Context
The researchers define sufficient context as meaning that the retrieved information (from RAG) contains all the necessary details to derive a correct answer. The classification that something contains sufficient context doesn’t require it to be a verified answer. It’s only assessing whether an answer can be plausibly derived from the provided content.
This means that the classification is not verifying correctness. It’s evaluating whether the retrieved information provides a reasonable foundation for answering the query.
Insufficient context means the retrieved information is incomplete, misleading, or missing critical details needed to construct an answer.
Sufficient Context Autorater
The Sufficient Context Autorater is an LLM-based system that classifies query-context pairs as having sufficient or insufficient context. The best performing autorater model was Gemini 1.5 Pro (1-shot), achieving a 93% accuracy rate, outperforming other models and methods.
Reducing Hallucinations With Selective Generation
The researchers discovered that RAG-based LLM responses were able to correctly answer questions 35–62% of the time when the retrieved data had insufficient context. That meant that sufficient context wasn’t always necessary for improving accuracy because the models were able to return the right answer without it 35-62% of the time.
They used their discovery about this behavior to create a Selective Generation method that uses confidence scores and sufficient context signals to decide when to generate an answer and when to abstain (to avoid making incorrect statements and hallucinating).
The confidence scores are self-rated probabilities that the answer is correct. This achieves a balance between allowing the LLM to answer a question when there’s a strong certainty it is correct while also receiving intervention for when there’s sufficient or insufficient context for answering a question, to further increase accuracy.
The researchers describe how it works:
“…we use these signals to train a simple linear model to predict hallucinations, and then use it to set coverage-accuracy trade-off thresholds. This mechanism differs from other strategies for improving abstention in two key ways. First, because it operates independently from generation, it mitigates unintended downstream effects…Second, it offers a controllable mechanism for tuning abstention, which allows for different operating settings in differing applications, such as strict accuracy compliance in medical domains or maximal coverage on creative generation tasks.”
Takeaways
Before anyone starts claiming that context sufficiency is a ranking factor, it’s important to note that the research paper does not state that AI will always prioritize well-structured pages. Context sufficiency is one factor, but with this specific method, confidence scores also influence AI-generated responses by intervening with abstention decisions. The abstention thresholds dynamically adjust based on these signals, which means the model may choose to not answer if confidence and sufficiency are both low.
While pages with complete and well-structured information are more likely to contain sufficient context, other factors such as how well the AI selects and ranks relevant information, the system that determines which sources are retrieved, and how the LLM is trained also play a role. You can’t isolate one factor without considering the broader system that determines how AI retrieves and generates answers.
If these methods are implemented into an AI assistant or chatbot, it could lead to AI-generated answers that increasingly rely on web pages that provide complete, well-structured information, as these are more likely to contain sufficient context to answer a query. The key is providing enough information in a single source so that the answer makes sense without requiring additional research.
What are pages with insufficient context?
Lacking enough details to answer a query
Misleading
Incomplete
Contradictory
Incomplete information
The content requires prior knowledge
The necessary information to make the answer complete is scattered across different sections instead of presented in a unified response.
Google’s third party Quality Raters Guidelines (QRG) has concepts that are similar to context sufficiency. For example, the QRG defines low quality pages as those that don’t achieve their purpose well because they fail to provide necessary background, details, or relevant information for the topic.
Passages from the Quality Raters Guidelines:
“Low quality pages do not achieve their purpose well because they are lacking in an important dimension or have a problematic aspect”
“A page titled ‘How many centimeters are in a meter?’ with a large amount of off-topic and unhelpful content such that the very small amount of helpful information is hard to find.”
“A crafting tutorial page with instructions on how to make a basic craft and lots of unhelpful ‘filler’ at the top, such as commonly known facts about the supplies needed or other non-crafting information.”
“…a large amount of ‘filler’ or meaningless content…”
Even if Google’s Gemini or AI Overviews doesn’t not implement the inventions in this research paper, many of the concepts described in it have analogues in Google’s Quality Rater’s guidelines which themselves describe concepts about high quality web pages that SEOs and publishers that want to rank should be internalizing.
“Investigated a number of 404s recorded on a client website.
And a significant amount were generated by an AI service, which appears to have just made up articles, and URLs, in citations. It isn’t even using the right URL structure 🤦♂️
Debating the value of redirects and any potential impact.”
Thornton adds:
“On one hand, mistakes by more obscure AI bots might not seem worth correcting for the sake of adding more redirects. On the other, if it’s a relatively small client with a high value for conversions, even a couple of lost sales due to the damage to the brand will be noticeable.”
Google’s Perspective
Predicting an increase in hallucinated links, Google Search Advocate John Mueller offers guidance that can help navigate this issue.
First, he recommends having a good 404 page in place, stating:
“A good 404 page could help explain the value of the site, and where to go for more information. You could also use the URL as a site-search query & show the results on the 404 page, to get people closer.”
Before investing in solutions, he recommends collecting data.
Mueller states:
“I wonder if this is going to be a more common thing? It’s tempting to extrapolate from one off [incidents], but perhaps it makes sense to collect some more data before spending too much on it.”
In a follow-up comment, Mueller predicted:
“My tea leaves say that for the next 6-12 months we’ll see a slight uptick of these hallucinated links being clicked, and then they’ll disappear as the consumer services adjust to better grounding on actual URLs.”
Don’t Hope For Accidental Clicks
Mueller provided a broader perspective, advising SEO professionals to avoid focusing on minor metrics.
“I know some SEOs like to over-focus on tiny metrics, but I think sites will be better off focusing on a more stable state, rather than hoping for accidental by-clicks. Build more things that bring real value to the web, that attract & keep users coming back on their own.”
What This Means
As AI adoption grows, publishers may need to develop new strategies for mitigating hallucinations.
Ammon Johns, recognized as a pioneer in the SEO industry, offers a potential solution to consider.
“I think any new custom 404 page should include a note to anyone that arrived there from an AI prompt to explain hallucinations and how AI makes so many of them you’ve even updated your site to warn people. Always make your market smarter – education is the ultimate branding.”
It’s too early to recommend a specific strategy at this time.
Mueller advises monitoring these errors and their impact before making major changes.
John Mueller, a Google Search Advocate, suggests that SEO professionals should reconsider how their work fits into the modern web stack.
He references a “vibes-based” visualization highlighting how developers’ focus areas have shifted.
Mueller notes a disconnect between what industry pros pay attention to (such as JavaScript frameworks, performance optimizations, or new AI-driven tech) and what online businesses need.
However, he sees this as an opportunity for SEO professionals. He provides advice on staying relevant amid shifting business priorities.
Changing Business Priorities
Laurie Voss, VP of Developer Relations at Llama Index, shared a chart showing the areas of focus of software professionals from 1990 to 2025.
Screenshot from: Seldo.com, March 2025.
In the early days, developers were mainly concerned with hardware and networking. By the mid-2000s, the focus shifted to HTML, CSS, and server technologies. More recently, we’ve seen a move toward client frameworks, responsive design, and AI-powered development.
Although the data is subjective, Mueller highlights its value for SEOs. It shows how quickly areas like server-level work have become less critical for average web developers.
Mueller’s Take
Mueller’s point is straightforward: as web development changes, SEO must change, too. The skills that made you valuable five years ago might not be enough today.
Screenshot from: Seldo.com, March 2025.
Mueller says:
“If you work in SEO, consider where your work currently fits in with a graph like this. It’s not an objective graph based on data, but I think it’s worth thinking about how your work could profit from adding or shifting “tracks.””
He adds:
“What the average web developer thinks about isn’t necessarily what’s relevant for the “online business” (in whichever form you work). Looking at the graph, if your focus was “SEO at server level,” consider that the slice has shrunken quite a bit already.”
This matches Voss’s argument in the article “AI’s effects on programming jobs.”
Voss believes AI won’t kill development jobs but will create a new abstraction layer, changing how work is done. The same likely applies to SEO work.
What Should SEO Pros Focus On?
Reading between the lines of Mueller’s comment and the chart, several areas stand out for SEOs to develop:
Mobile performance skills
Working with AI tools
Understanding responsive design
Knowledge of client-side frameworks and how they affect SEO
Prompt engineering
In other words, step outside server-level optimizations and focus on client-side rendering and user experience elements.
Our Take At Search Engine Journal
Mueller’s advice hits home for us at SEJ. We’ve watched SEO evolve firsthand.
Not long ago, technical SEO mostly meant handling sitemaps, robots.txt files, and basic schema markup. Now, we’re writing about JavaScript rendering, Core Web Vitals, and AI content evaluation.
The most successful industry pros are those who expand their technical knowledge rather than stick to outdated practices. Those who understand traditional optimization and new web technologies will continue to thrive as our industry changes.
Mueller’s reminder to adapt isn’t just sound advice; it’s essential for staying relevant in search.
For more than two years, a new concept has been emerging called Agentic SEO.
The idea is to perform SEO using agents based on language models (LLMs) that perform complex tasks autonomously or semi-autonomously to save time for SEO experts.
Of course, humans remain in the loop to guide these agents and validate the results.
Today, with the advent of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other powerful LLM tools, it is easy to automate complex processes using agents.
Agentic SEO is, therefore, the use of AI agents to optimize SEO productivity. It differs from Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), which aims to improve SEO to be visible on search engines powered by LLMs such as SearchGPT, Perplexity, or AI Overviews.
This concept is based on three main levers: Ideation, Audit, and Generation.
In this first chapter, I will focus on ideation because there is so much to explore.
In our next article, we will see how this concept can be applied to auditing (full website analysis with real-time corrections), and how missing content can be generated using a “Human in the Loop” – or rather “SEO Expert in the Loop” – approach.
AI Agents And Workflows
Before presenting detailed use cases regarding ideation, it is essential to explain the concept of an agent.
AI Agent
Image from author, February 2025
AI agents need at least five key elements to function:
Tools: These are all the resources and technical functionalities available to the agent.
Memory: This is used to store all interactions so that the agent can remember information previously shared in the discussion.
Instructions: Which define its limits, its rules.
Knowledge: This is the database that contains the concepts that the agent can use to solve problems; it can use the knowledge of the LLM or external databases.
Persona: Which defines its “personality” and often its level of expertise, including, in particular, its way of interacting.
Workflow
Workflows allow complex tasks to be broken down into simpler subtasks and chained together logically.
They are useful in SEO because they facilitate the collection and manipulation of data needed to perform specific SEO actions.
Furthermore, in recent months, AI providers (OpenAI, Claude, etc.) have moved from simply offering the model as such to enriching the user experience.
For example, the Deep Research feature in ChatGPT or Perplexity is not a new model, but a workflow that allows complex searches to be performed in several steps.
This process, which would take a human several hours, is carried out by AI agents in a few tens of minutes.
Image from author, February 2025
The diagram above illustrates a simple SEO workflow that starts with “Data & Constraints,” which feeds a tool called “Tools SEO 1” to perform a specific action (such as SERP analysis or scraping).
Next, we have two AIs (IA 1 and IA 2) that intervene to generate specific content, and then comes the “HITL” (Human In The Loop) step before reaching the deliverables.
Although AI and automation play a central role, human supervision and expertise remain essential to ensure quality results.
Use-Case: Ideation
Let’s start with ideation. As you know, AI excels at opening up possibilities.
With the right methods, it is possible to push AI to explore every conceivable idea on a topic.
An SEO expert will then select, refine, and prioritize the best suggestions based on their experience.
Numerous experiments have demonstrated the positive impact of this synergy between human creativity and artificial intelligence.
Below, Ethan Mollick’s diagram posted on X (Twitter) illustrates a benchmark of the creative process with and without AI:
In a large representative sample of humans compared to GPT-4: “the creative ideas produced by AI chatbots are rated more creative [by humans ]than those created by humans… Augmenting humans with AI improves human creativity, albeit not as much as ideas created by ChatGPT alone” pic.twitter.com/rJDUZxJ4iL
The figure shows the distribution of creativity scores (from 0 to 10) assigned to different sources: ChatGPT, Bard (now Gemini), a human control group (HumanBaseline), a human group working with AI (HumanPlusAI), and another group working against AI (HumanAgainstAI).
The horizontal axis represents the perceived level of creativity, while the vertical axis indicates the frequency of each score (density).
We can see that the curve corresponding to HumanPlusAI is generally shifted to the right, meaning that evaluators consider this human+AI collaboration to be the most creative approach.
Conversely, the average scores of ChatGPT and Gemini, although high, remain below those obtained by the human-machine synergy.
Finally, the HumanBaseline group (humans alone) is just below the performance of the Human+AI duo, while the HumanAgainstAI group is the least creative.
AI alone can produce impressive results, but it is in combination with human expertise and sensitivity that the highest levels of creativity are achieved. Let me give you some concrete examples.
Tools Like Deep Research
Among the tools available, Deep Research stands out for its ability to conduct in-depth research in several steps, providing a valuable source of inspiration for ideation.
I recommend using this open-source version; if you prefer, you can also use the OpenAI or Perplexity versions.
How Does It Work?
This diagram describes the operation of the Open Source Deep Research tool.
It generates and executes search queries, crawls the resulting pages, then recursively explores promising leads, and finally produces a detailed report in Markdown format.
Image from author, February 2025
There are several steps to using Deep Research:
Enter your query: You will be asked to enter your query. You must try to be as precise as possible. Do not hesitate to ask ChatGPT or Claude to create your DeepResearch search.
Specify the depth of the search (recommended: between 3 and 10, default: 6): How many topics can be found in each iteration?
Specify the depth of exploration (recommended: between 1 and 5, default: 3): If the crawler finds an interesting topic, how many pages deep will it explore?
Refinement: Sometimes, you need to answer follow-up questions to refine the direction of the search.
With this open-source version, you can turn this open-source project into a real SEO tool. I have identified more than four use cases:
Competitor Content Analysis: The tool can automate the collection and analysis of competitors’ content to identify their strategies and spot opportunities for differentiation.
Long-Tail Keyword Research: By analyzing the web, it can identify specific keywords with high potential and less competition, facilitating content optimization.
SERP Analysis: It can collect and analyze search engine results to understand trends and competitors’ positioning.
Content Idea Generation: Based on in-depth research, it can identify relevant topics and frequently asked questions in a given niche.
For example, you can install CursorAI, a code generation tool, and ask it to modify the code to create a SERP analysis. The tool will easily make all the necessary changes.
With Agentic SEO, it is possible not only to customize and improve existing tools but, more importantly, to create your own tool to suit your specific needs.
On the other hand, if you are not a developer at all, I advise you to use a no-code solution.
No-Code Agent Workflow Tools
Here is an example of a no-code tool called Dng.ai.
We use a CSV file provided by Moz, which we analyze using an agent capable of processing the data, generating Python code, and extracting all the necessary information.
In blue, you have the input fields that serve as a starting point; then, in orange, you have tools like scrapers, crawlers, and keyword tools to extract all the necessary data; and finally, in purple, you have the AIs that identify all the clusters that need to be created.
Image from author, February 2025
The agent then compares this data with the topics already on your site to identify missing content.
Finally, it generates a complete list of topics to create, ensuring optimal coverage of your SEO strategy. There are many no-code tools for building Agentic workflows.
I won’t list them all, but as you can see here on this tool, an interface is automatically generated from the workflow, and all you need to do is specify your topic and a URL and press the run button to get the results in less than two minutes.
Image from author, February 2025
Explore The Full Potential Of This Tool For Yourself
I leave you to appreciate the results of a tool that is built from the SEO data of any tool.
Image from author, February 2025
I think I could have made more than two hours of video on YouTube just on the ideation aspect, as there is so much to say and test.
I now invite you to explore the full potential of these tools and experiment with them to optimize your SEO strategy, and next time, I will cover audit use cases with Agentic SEO.
Are you ready to transform your approach to online reputation management? With the evolving landscape of digital marketing, understanding how customer feedback impacts your business is crucial for success.
Why This Webinar Is a Must-Attend Event
Join us for our insightful webinar on March 26, 2025, titled “Unlock Local SEO: Online Review Trends Broken Down by Industry.” Dive into data-backed strategies from GatherUp’s analysis of tens of thousands of businesses to uncover the real impact of online reputation management.
In this session, you’ll learn:
Key Trends in Customer Feedback: Explore the latest trends in review volume, customer feedback, and Net Promoter Scores (NPS).
Star Ratings and Trust: Understand how new data on star ratings can significantly affect customer trust and conversion rates.
Best Practices for Reviews: Gain actionable strategies for increasing positive reviews and driving customer loyalty.
Expert Insights From GatherUp’s Specialists
Join our expert panel, including seasoned professionals from GatherUp, as they provide actionable optimization strategies that you can start applying to your website immediately. Whether you’re new to online reputation management or looking to fine-tune your approach, this webinar will equip you with the knowledge and tools to maximize your website’s potential.
Live Q&A: Get Your Questions Answered
Don’t miss the live Q&A session following the presentation, where our experts will answer your most pressing questions about reputation management and customer engagement.
Don’t Miss Out!
Embrace the future of reputation management in 2025. Join us live to stay ahead of the competition. Equip yourself with the knowledge to leverage customer feedback for better business outcomes.
Can’t attend live? No worries—register anyway, and we’ll send you the recording. Transform how you manage your online reputation. Register today!
If you stay organized, leverage tools to scale, and pay attention to details, you will have done everything you can to ensure business continuity in the short, medium, and long term pertaining to organic performance.
Aside from the technical aspects of migration, an enterprise migration, more often than not, comes with the added pressures of:
Strong levels of C-level/VP-level attention and communications.
Multiple project teams and stakeholders making SEO-impacting decisions.
SEO pros needing to be involved in “non-traditional” SEO calls and planning meetings.
In a large site migration, there is also the increased potential for something known as “migration lag.”
What Is Migration Lag?
Migration lag refers to the time period after launching a new website where traffic and rankings drop as search engines discover and index the new site.
For huge enterprise sites with hundreds of thousands of URLs, this lag can last for months.
To minimize migration lag, you must have a solid redirect strategy before the new site launches. This means:
Prioritizing redirects for high-traffic and high-value pages. Focus on redirecting pages that drive the most traffic and revenue first.
Using wildcards to redirect categories of pages. For example, redirect /product/* to /new-site/all-products/.
Including URL parameters in redirects. Make sure redirects pass on any query parameters, like /product/123?color=red to /new-site/product/123?color=red.
Breaking redirect chains. If a page has been redirected multiple times, point the final redirect to the new destination URL.
Redirecting backlinks. Find all links pointing to the old site and set up redirects so they point to the proper new pages. This preserves the link equity you’ve built up.
Accounting for recent redirects. If you’ve done any redirects in the past six months, set up new redirects to point those pages to the proper new URLs.
With technical SEO savvy and patience, you can navigate an enterprise website migration with minimal traffic and rankings loss.
Stay on top of your redirects and keep optimizing and reacting to your data and Google’s ever-changing search engine results pages (SERPs), and search traffic will return to normal.
Soft-Launch Pre-Migration
In June 2023, John Mueller floated the idea of launching a new domain “early” before the official migration switchover.
This was interesting, as the general best practice narrative has been to not let the new domain be open to crawling before the migration switchover date.
As with any new recommendation, this is something I’ve tested since on personal project sites and with client moves.
Testing has shown that indexing has happened faster for the new domain, especially when compared to the domains in my “How Long Should A Migration Take” study.
In the Google Search Console screenshot below, I migrated a domain on January 28, but I put the new domain live and crawlable/indexable from January 21.
By February 1, the new domain was 100% indexed, and Google had even crawled and processed all the /feed URLs that were set to nodindex.
Screenshot from Google Search Console, February 2025
While this was a small website (1,300 URLs), the data was similar to other domain migrations and subdomain to subfolder migrations I’ve taken this approach with.
The most common pushback I’ve had to this approach has been the wider business desire to “make a splash” with PR around the launch and the chance of an existing customer finding the new site early. If they share the new site, the potential problems this could cause can diminish any benefits gained.
The second most common pushback, which is valid, is if there have been substantial changes to content, product, or brand that need to remain under embargo until the scheduled launch date.
Defining The Migration Strategy
Once you’ve audited your existing site and redirects, it’s time to map out how you want to handle the migration.
The strategy you develop now will determine how seamless this transition is for both your users and search engines.
Define Goals
What do you want to achieve with this migration? Are you aiming to consolidate domains, move to a new content management system (CMS), restructure content, or combine?
Be very clear on your objectives so you can develop the best approach.
Prioritize Redirects
With hundreds of thousands of URLs, you’ll need to determine which redirects are most critical to implement first. Focus initially on:
Your most important pages (homepage, product pages, etc.).
Pages that generate a substantial amount of website leads/revenue, either directly or indirectly.
Pages that generate the most organic traffic for the website.
Pages with strong backlink profiles. Those that are crawled frequently by Google/other search engines should be prioritized above those with bigger backlink clusters – but this is an objective measure you will need to determine.
Once the high-priority redirects are handled, work your way down from there. Don’t worry about redirecting every single URL right away.
As long as you have the majority of important pages and traffic accounted for, the remaining redirects can be added over time.
A great way to prioritize redirects, is to create a dashboard of all relevant data you wish to consider and prioritize by (such as the examples I’ve given above) and creating a matrix with RANK.EQ in Google Sheets, and then a prioritization categorizer.
The example below is a very simplified version of this. First, you want to collate all your data at the URL level:
Image by author, February 2025
You then want to rank these values against their individual metric data sets. To do this, you use =RANK.EQ(VALUE,VALUE RANGE).
This lets you see which URLs are in the higher percentile and which ones are in the lower percentile:
Image by author, February 2025
You then want to automate batch assignment, and this requires three steps.
First, a “reverse RANK.EQ”, which would be:
=COUNT(A:A) - RANK.EQ(A1, A:A) + 1
Which will tell you which URLs are “the best” based on all four metric ranks combined:
Image by author, February 2025
From here, you can either convert the Overall EQ to percentages in another column, and then run a rule against them that if they are =< or => certain thresholds, they fall into different batches.
You can also split the rows up by volume ordered by the Overall EQ if you have redirect limits (like when moving to Salesforce Commerce Cloud or SAP Hybris; read more below).
Map Content And URL Structure
Determine how you want to reorganize or restructure your content on the new site.
Map out which existing URLs will redirect to which new destinations. Group related content and consolidate where possible.
In some cases, temporary 302 redirects may make sense, especially if the page content is still being migrated.
Be very careful when using wildcards, and always do spot checks to ensure there are no 404 errors. Redirect parameters whenever possible to avoid duplicate content issues.
Backlinks
Make a list of any pages with strong backlink profiles and ensure they are redirected properly. Reach out to webmasters linking to those pages and let them know the new URL to see if they will update the link on their page.
This helps to preserve the SEO value built up over time.
With careful planning and strategic prioritizing, you can migrate an enterprise website and put the necessary redirects in place without (too much) chaos. But go slowly; this is not a task to rush!
Think through each step and check your work along the way.
Establishing The Migration Project Timelines
When managing a large website migration, establishing realistic timelines is crucial.
Trying to redirect hundreds of thousands of URLs in a short timeframe is a recipe for disaster.
You need to plan ahead and be strategic in how you phase the work.
It’s also very important that migration timelines are a collaborative effort involving all stakeholders.
Far too often, the business determines an arbitrary deadline without taking into account the feasibility of all teams to complete all necessary actions comfortably in time.
Avoid Phased/Partial Migrations
Avoiding phased or partial migrations is crucial when managing redirects for an enterprise website. Piecemealing your migration will only create more work and headaches down the road.
I worked on a migration in the past two years that was consolidating multiple domains (products) under a new umbrella domain, and the original plan was to do one after the other in a phased approach.
More than a year later, the second domino still hasn’t fallen. Google has started to rank the umbrella domain for products in the group it isn’t optimized for – causing internal domain cannibalization and performance issues as the brand entity is “fractured” across multiple domains.
Prior to this, I’d never witnessed a phased or partial migration mitigate the risks to the performance that the cautious decision-makers felt it would.
Do It All At Once
The best approach is to redirect all URLs at the same time. This ensures:
No pages are left orphaned without a redirect in place.
There are no redirect chains created that need to be cleaned up later. Redirect chains can negatively impact SEO and user experience.
All backlinks point to the proper new destination page. If done in phases, old pages may accumulate new backlinks that then need to be redirected.
Setting Up 301 Redirects At Scale
At an enterprise level, setting up 301 redirects for tens or hundreds of thousands of URLs requires some strategic planning.
Here are some tips for tackling this at scale:
Using Wildcards And Handling Parameter URLs
When managing redirects for an enterprise website, wildcards and parameters become your best friends. With so many URLs, creating individual redirects for each would be an endless task.
Wildcards allow you to redirect groups of pages at once.
Say you have product pages like /product/abc123, /product/def456, /product/ghi789. You can set up a wildcard redirect like /product/* to point to the new /products page.
This single redirect will capture all product pages and send visitors to the right place.
Parameters, like IDs, SKUs, or dates, often change when site content gets updated or reorganized.
Rather than tracking down each instance of an old parameter to redirect it, use a redirect that includes the parameter.
For example, if you have a URL like /blog/post?id=123 that is now /news/story/123, set up the redirect /blog/post?id= to point to /news/story/.
This will catch any page with that parameter pattern and send visitors to the new structure.
When used properly at an enterprise scale, wildcards and parameters can:
Save countless hours of manual redirect creation and maintenance.
Ensure no page is left behind during a migration or site architecture change.
Continue to capture new pages that match the pattern as the site grows and evolves.
Be very careful when using wildcards and parameters in your redirects. Test them thoroughly to ensure no unintended pages are caught in the net.
Monitor them regularly, even after launch, to catch any issues early. Used responsibly, though, they are indispensable tools for managing redirects at an enterprise level.
Breaking Redirect Chains
Redirect chains can easily form when you have a high volume of redirects on an enterprise website.
A redirect chain occurs when a URL redirects to another URL that also redirects, creating a chain of multiple redirects to reach the final destination page.
To avoid redirect chains, you’ll need to trace back through your recent redirect history to find the original source URL. Once you identify the initial URL that started the chain, redirect it directly to the final destination page.
This will cut out all the middle redirects in the chain and provide a much better user experience.
Check your server log files to view URL redirect histories from the past three to six months. Look for any patterns of the same URL redirecting multiple times.
Use a redirect crawler tool to automatically detect redirect chains on your site. These tools will crawl your site and log any series of multiple redirects for the same URL.
For recent redirects less than 180 days old, double-check that the original URL is now redirecting properly to the correct final destination. Newer redirects have a higher chance of issues, so verifying them will help avoid future problems.
If you discover broken redirect chains, fix them by redirecting the initial source URL directly to the last destination URL in the chain. Remove any middle redirects that are no longer needed.
Test all fixes to ensure the redirect chain is fully broken and the user experience is improved. Check that SEO rankings and traffic have stabilized for the URLs involved.
By diligently detecting and breaking redirect chains, you’ll provide a much better overall experience for your users and site visitors.
Your enterprise website will function more efficiently, and you’ll avoid potential drops in search rankings and traffic.
Historic Redirects
When migrating an enterprise website, it’s easy to forget about redirects that were already in place. These historic redirects, especially those under six months old, still need to be accounted for to avoid traffic loss.
As you audit your site’s current redirects, make a list of any that point to pages that will be changing or removed in the migration.
These redirects will need to be updated to point to the new destination URLs. Some things to look for include:
Temporary event pages that now redirect to a general section.
Product pages that now redirect to an updated model.
Blog posts that redirect to a category archive.
Double-check that any historic redirects over six months old still need to be in place. Some may be sending signals to search engines that are no longer needed.
Removing unnecessary historic redirects will also help to simplify your site’s redirect structure and make it easier to manage going forward.
When setting up your migration’s redirect plan, be sure to factor in updating any historic redirects to their new destination URLs.
Leaving these behind could result in lost traffic and rankings for important pages on your site.
Staying on top of your enterprise website’s historic and new redirects during migration is key to a successful transition with minimal SEO impact.
Overcoming Redirect Limits
If you have an enterprise website with hundreds of thousands of pages, you may run into issues with redirect limits from your CMS or ecommerce platform.
Many systems like SAP Hybris and Salesforce Commerce Cloud cap the number of redirects you can have at 50,000 to 100,000. For a major website migration (especially enterprise ecommerce websites), this likely won’t cut it.
To get around these constraints, you’ll need to get creative. A few options to consider:
Use wildcard redirects to capture categories of pages. For example, redirect /products/* to /shop/*. This single redirect will capture all pages that start with /products.
Exclude parameters from redirects when possible. If you have pages like /product-name?color=red and /product-name?size=large, redirect only /product-name to the new URL. The parameters are often not indexed or linked to, so you can leave them out of the redirect.
Break up redirect chains. If you have a series of three+ redirects for a single page, break up the chain and create direct redirects from the initial URLs to the final destination. Historically, chained redirects were thought to pass along link juice, but this has been proven false. Keep redirects as direct as possible.
Prioritize mission-critical pages. When you start to reach the redirect limit, focus on redirecting pages that drive significant traffic and revenue. You can leave less important pages unredirected or with a 404 error temporarily.
Ask your CMS vendor about increasing limits. Many systems will increase redirect limits on an enterprise website if you ask and explain your needs. Be prepared to pay additional fees for this add-on.
With creative thinking and persistence, you can overcome most redirect limits and complete an enterprise website migration without losing a big chunk of your organic traffic.
The key is having a well-thought-out redirect strategy and implementing it well before you hit your CMS’s limits.
Once the redirects have been implemented, it’s time to see how your organic traffic and rankings have been impacted.
Benchmarking Your Progress
This will help determine if any further optimization is needed. Here are a few key metrics to monitor:
Organic search traffic. Compare traffic from major search engines like Google before and after the migration. Expect some initial drop in traffic, but it should start recovering within one to two months. If traffic is still significantly lower after three months, revisit your redirect implementation.
Keyword rankings.Track the rankings of your most important keywords to see if their positions have changed. Drops in ranking are common after a migration, but rankings should start improving again over time as search engines recrawl your new site. Major drops that don’t improve could signal redirect or content issues that need to be addressed.
Indexation. Use a tool like Google Search Console to check how much of your new site has been indexed. A large, complex site can take three to six months for Google to fully recrawl and re-index. Look for steady increases in indexation over time. If indexation stalls or drops, there may be technical issues preventing Google from accessing parts of your site.
404 errors. Monitor your 404 errors to ensure any broken links are redirecting properly. High numbers of 404s, especially old URLs, indicate redirects that need to be created or fixed.
Backlinks. Do a backlink audit to verify that any links pointing to your old site now redirect to the proper new URLs. Failure to redirect backlinks is a common cause of traffic and ranking loss after a website migration.
Regularly benchmarking these key metrics will give you valuable insight into how well your enterprise website migration and redirect implementation is going.
Make adjustments as needed to get your new site’s organic performance back on track.
Communicating Migration Performance To The C-Level
Communicating migration performance to leadership is crucial for continued support and investment in your enterprise website.
Even if the migration itself goes smoothly, problems can arise after launch if the C-suite isn’t on board.
Not all metrics need to matter directly to SEO, but giving the C-level more data and clarity can help prevent knee-jerk reactions and bad decisions from being imposed on the migrations team.
Be transparent that there may be an initial dip in metrics as the new site establishes itself. Having targets will help determine if the migration is meeting business needs after things settle in.
Share Detailed Reports
In the months following the migration, provide regular reports on how the new site performs compared to the old site and the established KPIs.
Compare these same metrics from the old site to give context on progress. Be open about any issues, and have solutions and next steps ready to propose.
It often helps to create a Looker Studio report so the C-level has instant access to data and feels as though they have some control over the situation.
Finally, Don’t Forget To Highlight Wins
While reporting on challenges is important, it is also important to showcase successes from the migration.
Promoting wins, big and small, demonstrates the value of the investment in the migration and builds confidence in your team.
Keeping leadership regularly informed about how the new enterprise website is performing is essential.
With open communication and a mix of progress reports and wins, executives will remain supportive and engaged in optimizing the site to achieve the best results.
The pace of change in search marketing has accelerated, and the stakes for keeping up to date have never been higher. This year’s selection of podcasts reflects a growing sophistication and expertise in the industry, a reaction to the intensity of pressure from AI and the erosion of organic search. The following SEO podcasts have been chosen for their grasp of what’s happening right now, publishing frequency, and willingness to embrace a more expansive perspective on all aspects of search marketing.
1. Crawling Mondays by Aleyda Solis
Host: Aleyda Solis.
Crawling Mondays is by International SEO specialist Aleyda Solis. Her podcast covers the latest news related to SEO every Monday all year long. Each podcast is a concise summary of recent developments. Episodes clock in at 10 minutes or less, giving her audience a quick way to catch up and be up to date.
Aleyda also publishes special episodes on topics that matter to digital marketers. Those episodes range from 30 to 45 minutes long. Recent episodes featured an interview with Danny Sullivan, a discussion on whether ecommerce sites should produce informational content, how to to achieve programmatic content that’s not spammy and an in-depth discussion of JavaScript SEO.
Hosts: Michael Chidzey, Jo Turnbull, Ruth Turnbull.
The affable hosts of the Good Signals SEO Office Hours podcast step into the gap left by Google’s essentially defunct SEO Office Hours show, offering their own take on discussing user-submitted questions. Every week features different guests, lending each episode a fresh perspective on SEO and a sense of community.
SERPs Up is a Wix SEO podcast focusing on questions and how-to’s relevant to publishers, in-house teams, agencies, and freelance search marketing professionals. They publish episodes weekly, with each episode lasting about thirty minutes, making them easy to commit to during those small pockets of free time.
Each episode covers a novel topic useful to most professionals. Recent episodes have focused on subjects like unifying offline and online marketing, thinking beyond algorithms, whether there’s such a thing as too much data, and email marketing.
The Majestic SEO Podcast is a long-running and prolific podcast hosted by David Bain. It focuses on a diverse range of topics that are directly and indirectly related to SEO, including accessibility, user experience, AI search trends, and SEO itself. Their treatment of SEO is expansive, covering topics ranging from mining the sales team for customer insights to omnichannel marketing and examining what the phrase ‘Expert Content’ really means.
Host David Bain also looks ahead at developing trends by exploring concepts like agentic AI. Some episodes take a broader approach, stepping outside traditionally considered SEO topics—such as an interview with a psychology expert on how psychological principles could be applied to SEO.
SEO is a highly subjective field, and it’s easy for biases to narrow the range of discussion. That’s why it’s refreshing that Bain takes an expansive approach, welcoming a wide variety of guests and perspectives to the Majestic SEO Podcast.
Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger, hosts of one of the longest-running SEO podcasts, discuss the latest news and issues top of mind in the SEO community. Both hosts have decades of experience and draw from a deep well of knowledge, giving each topic the benefit of their considerable expertise.
Hosts Sarah and Tazmin publish a weekly podcast about the experiences of life as a search marketing professional. Recent episodes discuss how to create a successful conference speaker pitch, how to enjoy networking, and how to make time for breaks. Google and its competitors never sleep. How does one keep up while also balancing career growth and personal fulfillment?
Covering both the personal and professional sides of the industry, their discussions provide insights, advice, and relatable stories for listeners navigating similar paths.
Sarah shared:
“Whilst there are amazing SEO podcasts out there, Tazmin and I saw that there aren’t many that just focus on soft skills, personal growth, and career development.
Yes, some touch on these topics, but we definitely saw an opportunity to create a podcast that solely focuses on giving SEO professionals actionable tips and advice, so they can optimize their careers, not just the algorithms. Cheesy tagline, but true!
SEO Pioneers interviews search marketing experts, many of them with decades of experience, about important topics of today as well as the history of SEO. It’s a great way to understand what’s happening from the unique perspective of experience and time.
This approach provides a deeper context for current industry trends, showing how SEO principles have evolved alongside emerging technologies, algorithm updates, shifting demographics, and user behavior.
SEO Pioneers offers listeners the opportunity to hear directly from those who have helped shape SEO. John Mueller even credited the show as ‘one to watch’ on Google Search News.
The Near Memo podcast discusses Local Search SEO, covering both current developments and broader industry trends. Recent episodes have explored Google Business Profile (GBP) issues, AI’s role in local search, and the growing challenge of review fraud, providing insights that help businesses and marketers stay on top.
Recent episode topics explored Google Business Profiles, new Google Maps features, and navigating Google reviews. Hosts Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal bring decades of experience to the podcast, and it shows.
Hosts: Greg Finn, Jessica Budde, Christine ‘Shep’ Zirnheld, and Julia Meteer.
The Marketing O’Clock podcast delivers news and insights about paid advertising, as well as topics related to search and eCommerce. In an industry that can sound like an echo chamber, Marketing O’Clock offers its own unique blend of news, making it a great way to keep up with current events that may have been overlooked. Recent topics include Instagram’s new advertising format that enables creators to get paid and Bitly’s addition of interstitial advertising to shortened URLs.
Their podcast is released every Friday. Add it to your calendar and tune in to the latest episodes.
10. Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard
Host: Jason Barnard.
Past episodes in 2024 and 2023 covered SEO, but in 2025, Jason is shifting focus to conversations with successful digital founders about their experiences launching, scaling, and selling online businesses. Topics include building trust, managing reputation, growing an AI-driven platform serving millions of students, leveraging personal visibility for business growth, and recognizing when shifts in customers, products, or services signal it’s time to consider rebranding and how to navigate that transition.
Hosts: Gary Illyes, John Mueller, Lizzi Sassman, Martin Splitt.
Search Off the Record is an informal podcast about search and SEO from Google’s perspective. Topics range from a behind-the-scenes look at search crawlers and indexing to the considerations that went into rewriting Google’s SEO Starter Guide, search ranking updates, and the concept of quality in search.
Two factors make Google’s podcast notable:
Variety: There’s no other podcast that relates search and SEO from the search engine’s point of view.
Authoritative source: The fact that it’s created by Google is a compelling reason to tune in.
The podcasts tend to ramble in the beginning with some extended banter and kidding around. But once the hosts get going, the insights start.
Edge Of The Web offers a roundup of the week’s SEO news with coverage of topics like Google updates, LinkedIn analytics, content authenticity, and Meta advertising, plus guests like Paula Mejia of Wix, Lidia Infante, and Britney Muller.
Clarity Digital podcast is a relatively new podcast that’s been highly active for the past few months. Its guests have decades of experience across a range of marketing topics that cover SEO and adjacent topics, reflecting the reality that modern SEO and marketing are intersecting more now than at any other time in search marketing history.
Recent episodes covered AI’s role in writing with Amanda Clark, branding and SEO strategies with Ash Nallawalla, and modern social advertising tactics with Akvile DeFazio.
UK-based Jack Chambers-Ward hosts a wide-ranging SEO podcast that sometimes offers challenging points of view, proving that SEO is a truly subjective topic. Recent episodes featured guests like Mordy Oberstein discussing branded search and a lively discussion with Itamar Blauer about Google and AI Search, raising the question of how much trust must erode before Google starts losing market share. Some of the topics explored invite different perspectives, and the podcast is at its best when embracing that dynamic.
There are a few new additions this year, and a few dropped off because they stopped publishing. This year’s list is the strongest to date because of the high quality of the commentary and the wide topics covered which will appeal to search marketing professionals, business owners and creators.
Product descriptions have always been a vital ecommerce selling tool. But crafting unique and persuasive copy is challenging.
So almost a decade ago, I wrote what has become one of my favorite articles, “How to ‘Manufacture’ Product Descriptions for Ecommerce.” The piece describes a composition process and, ultimately, produces this description for a soup spoon:
Hungry for some hearty chicken noodle or creamy clam chowder? This soup spoon has a large bowl meant to haul bisques and broths to your mouth. In fact, this soup spoon can hold about three times as much soupy goodness as your standard table spoon. You could take three times as many bites, or you could buy this soup spoon and slurp large.
Descriptions at Scale
I had been struggling with product descriptions on the website of my employer, a regional brick-and-click farm-and-ranch retailer. We had thousands of items needing descriptions for our ecommerce site. I tried three options: Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a Romanian product description agency, and a template-based tool.
Artificial intelligence has made it easy to produce product descriptions in a mechanical or algorithmic way, almost like manufacturing.
Writers hired via the Turk or in Romania tended to approach each description like a novel with a plot. Some descriptions were excellent, but not all. The bad ones missed the point.
I then devised the product description “manufacturing” process.
Focus on a single thing. The item’s top feature or competitive advantage.
Connect to a benefit. Explain how the feature helps the shopper.
Clarify and specify. Make the feature-and-benefit bridge precise and understandable.
Test your words. Remove redundancy, add action verbs, and spark interest.
Spell and grammar check. Sloppy text erodes trust and harms conversions.
Add an introduction. Polish, humanize, and insert a hook.
Add a call to action. Encourage the sale.
The process was a framework for writers and marketing teams.
Natural language templates were forerunners to today’s generative artificial intelligence platforms. The templates used product-category variables to mass-produce copy.
A template for LED televisions might look like this:
{{ “Experience” || “Enjoy” || “Imagine” }} {{ screen size >= 55 ? {{“cinema-like” || “theater-style”}} “viewing”: “the shows and movies you love: }} from the comfort of your {{“living room” || “home”}} with this {{ screen size }} {{ brand }} {{ screen type }} television.
That example came from Best Buy:
Experience cinema-like viewing from the comfort of your living room with this 55-inch Insignia LED television. It displays Blu-ray and high-definition movies in full 1080p resolution with stunning HD detail. Use the three HDMI inputs to create a home theater experience with this Insignia LED TV and your other audio and video devices.
Generative AI
I’ve used the “manufacturing” and natural-language processes on dozens of ecommerce sites.
But generative AI makes the task easier with better results — morphing from templates and natural language into prompt engineering.
Instruct the AI on what to do. Here the aim is to produce a product description focusing on a single feature.
First, produce a template-like prompt:
Compose a compelling product description for [Product Name], focusing on the [Detailed Key Feature]. Describe how the [Short Key Feature] benefits customers, providing specific examples and comparisons.
The variables could be:
[Product Name] – “a soup spoon.”
[Detailed Key Feature] – “large spoon bowl that holds soup.”
[Short Key Feature] – “large bowl.”
The prompt addresses two elements of my original manufacturing process: “focus on a single thing” and “connect to a benefit.”
Context
Generative AI is better with context. So to engineer our prompt, we once again “connect to a benefit” while adding the “clarify and specify” step to include our target customer.
Imagine you are an experienced copywriter working on product descriptions. Compose a compelling product description for [Product Name], focusing on the [Detailed Key Feature]. Describe how the [Short Key Feature] benefits customers, for example, [Benefit Bridge], providing specific examples and comparisons.
Include a direct address call to action, too. Note [Product Name] is for [Target Audience]. Use a [Brand Voice] tone. Ensure the description is engaging, grammatically correct, and avoids repetition. Use a varied, relevant, and meaningful vocabulary.
Our variables could be:
[Benefit Bridge] – “so customers get more soup with each bite.”
[Target Audience] – “anyone who likes soups and doesn’t want to take tiny bites.”
[Brand Voice] – “casual and fun.”
I’ve integrated three steps from the original process: “test your words,” “spell and grammar check,” and “add a call-to-action.”
References
Next, we can provide the AI with examples of successful, category-specific product descriptions.
The product description may be similar in style to these examples:
“[First Example]”
“[Optional Second Example]”
Craft three excellent product descriptions.
Filling in the example variables, we have a completed prompt.
Imagine you are an experienced copywriter working on product descriptions.
Compose a compelling product description for a soup spoon, focusing on the large bowl or head that allows it to hold soup. Describe how the large bowl benefits customers — such as “get more soup with each bite” — while providing examples and comparisons.
Include a direct call to action.
Note that a soup spoon is for anyone who likes soups and doesn’t want to take tiny bites. When you write, use a casual and fun tone. Ensure the description is engaging, grammatically correct, and avoids repetition. Use a varied, relevant, and meaningful vocabulary.
The product description may be similar in style to this example:
Hungry for some hearty chicken noodle or creamy clam chowder? This soup spoon has a large bowl meant to haul bisques and broths to your mouth. In fact, this soup spoon can hold about three times as much soupy goodness as your standard table spoon. You could take three times as many bites, or you could buy this soup spoon and slurp large.
Craft three excellent product descriptions.
Evaluate
Even the best AI prompts will not always produce the desired results, so evaluate the output. The example prompt generated this response from ChatGPT 4o.
Tired of chasing soup around your bowl with a tiny spoon? Meet the soup spoon designed for real soup lovers. Its generous, deep bowl lets you scoop up rich, velvety bisques, hearty stews, and soul-warming broths in satisfying mouthfuls — no more dainty sips. Compared to your average tablespoon, this bad boy holds nearly three times as much, so you can enjoy more flavor with every bite. Whether you’re slurping ramen or savoring homemade chicken noodles, this spoon gets the job done. Go big or go hungry — grab yours today.
Iterate
The final step in Google’s prompt engineering framework is to iterate or repeat the process with minor changes until you get the right response.
Product descriptions have never been more critical for ecommerce success. How we produce and test them reflects their importance.
