Many ecommerce businesses sell products that do not fit in a flat-rate envelope, so to speak.
Fitness equipment, safes, arcade machines, specialty furniture, and other freight-grade items are heavy, expensive, and complicated to ship domestically, let alone abroad.
Nonetheless, Robert Khachatryan, founder and CEO of Freight Right, argues that some of those merchants may have international demand they are not serving.
Demand
Learning if a product or company has overseas appeal can be as simple as reviewing the analytics. A U.S. merchant, for instance, could check visitors’ locations, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, or Canada.
Selling to those would-be customers at just half the domestic conversion rate could generate significant revenue.
Robert Khachatryan
A second indication of an untapped, cross-border profit opportunity comes in the form of freight quotes. A merchant’s website says it ships 800-pound kayak trailers only within the United States, but in reality, shipping to, say, Latin America is comparable in cost.
Visitors from Latin America who checked the U.S.-only shipping policy likely looked elsewhere.
Proper Products
Thus if international visitors express an interest, decide if the cost of delivery makes a sale worthwhile.
For example, Khachatryan was not suggesting that any bulky, awkward, or heavy item is a candidate for global ecommerce. The math only works when the product has enough margin to justify freight, duties, and taxes.
“Nobody pays $700 or $1,000 to ship a $500 product,” Khachatryan said.
Yet bulky products are often candidates for international shipping when their selling price reaches into the thousands.
Such high-ticket purchases are common in B2B transactions. Need a high-speed laser welder in Idaho? Order it from Germany. It’s worth the freight.
The same may be true for select B2C or D2C cross-border items. Examples include commercial-grade fitness equipment, arcade machines, and even above-ground pools, a U.S. product marginally popular in the U.K.
Local Scarcity
Locally scarce goods can imply demand.
Commodity products rarely work. “People don’t buy a couch from another country. They buy from their local Ikea,” Khachatryan said. If a comparable product is readily available locally, international freight becomes difficult — even impossible — to justify.
Compliant
As a final check, would-be ecommerce exporters need to ensure a product is legal, usable, and compliant with safety and consumer regulations in the destination country.
Common differences are voltage and plug standards. Others are less obvious. Mattresses, according to Khachatryan, can have different requirements in Europe than in the U.S., for example.
Investigate whether incompatible or noncompliant products are easy to modify. Would a relatively small change open a promising cross-border market?
Regardless, shipping heavy wares internationally can be easier than expected.
Freight forwarding services will do the quoting, logistics details, and even white-glove delivery. Many, including Khachatryan’s Freight Right, have a Shopify App and an API to calculate freight at checkout.
Moreover, freight forwarders usually manage cross-border taxes and regulatory compliance.
Returns
Returns, in contrast, can be the most challenging aspect of cross-border selling. Return shipping is expensive, and recovering taxes and fees can take time.
The key, says Khachatryan, is having a plan.
He noted that products in good working condition could remain in a local warehouse until the next order.
Finally, shipping insurance can be a good idea. Some insurers, such as Xcover, cover the cost of return freight for rejected orders.
In short, cross-border ecommerce for large items is not for every merchant. But those selling high-value, differentiated products with existing international interest can unlock meaningful growth.
Magento, now officially Adobe Commerce (but still known as Magento with SEOs), remains a powerful but demanding ecommerce platform, especially in the Magento 2 era.
Adobe Commerce can deliver strong organic performance when built and optimized correctly, but it requires careful attention to technical SEO, site speed, and structured data. This guide outlines key Magento/Adobe Commerce SEO challenges and how to set your store up for long-term success in 2026.
It offers deep flexibility, strong product catalog capabilities, and enterprise-grade customization, which is why major brands like RadioShack and The National Gallery still rely on it today. But technical SEO on Magento can be challenging if the build, theme, and extensions are not handled with care.
Modern Magento builds must go beyond legacy SEO thinking. Alongside fundamentals like crawl efficiency and URL handling, store owners now need to consider Core Web Vitals, mobile-first indexing, structured data for product discovery, and visibility in AI-driven search experiences.
Magento can perform very well for organic search when implemented correctly, but out of the box, it is not optimized. Many of the known issues are fixable with the proper development and SEO process in place.
General Magento/Adobe Commerce SEO Issues
Magento 2 can deliver strong performance, but it requires the right hosting stack, theme, and caching setup. In a mobile-first and Core Web Vitals world, speed and stability are not optional, as they influence rankings, conversion rates, and how efficiently Google can crawl your store.
To build a fast Magento site, focus on solid hosting, full-page caching, Varnish, and Redis. Reducing JavaScript bloat from extensions, compressing images into modern formats like WebP or AVIF, and lazy-loading heavy assets also help keep load times low. Regular audits in tools like Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights make sure you stay aligned with Core Web Vitals.
Crawl efficiency is another important consideration. Your mobile version needs to load all core content and links, since Google now uses mobile crawling. It helps to maintain a clear category structure and server-side rendering for critical templates, so search engines can discover and interpret key content easily. Log file analysis is also useful to understand what Googlebot sees and where it may be wasting crawl budget.
On the infrastructure side, a CDN helps with serving assets quickly globally, while running PHP 8+ and MySQL 8 ensures stronger performance and security. Server-side caching layers further support speed and consistency.
Magento/Adobe Commerce Site Speed Issues
In my experience, Magento sites often become slow due to heavy themes and unnecessary extensions. Always question whether a module is needed and consider its impact on JavaScript and DOM complexity.
A slow site can cost both traffic and sales. Faster sites convert better and get crawled more frequently by Google.
There is more to performance than these points, but focusing on hosting, caching, and efficient rendering gives your store a strong foundation.
Key priorities to keep in mind:
Optimize hosting and caching so your store responds quickly at all times, especially during peak traffic.
Minimize JavaScript and extension load to reduce render delays and maintain healthy Core Web Vitals.
Ensure content and navigation are fully accessible on mobile, supporting crawl efficiency and user experience.
Use modern image formats and lazy loading to keep pages fast, even with rich visuals.
Common Magento/Adobe Commerce Product SEO Issues
Modern Magento product SEO is not just about fixing duplication. The goal is to help search engines understand products as entities, scale content efficiently, and support both shoppers and AI-driven discovery.
Simple Vs. Configurable Products
Configurable products should hold the primary authority. Simple SKUs used for variations (color, size, style) should:
Canonical to the parent configurable product.
Avoid indexation unless they serve a unique search intent (rare cases).
Carry structured data that matches the parent.
This prevents duplicate content, consolidates ranking signals, and aligns with Google’s preference for primary entity pages.
You need to ensure canonicals are server-side rendered and not dependent on JavaScript.
Product Titles & On-Page Content
Magento default document titles are still too generic, and leave a lot of opportunity for optimization.
Your title strategy should scale but remain meaningful. For scale, it’s easy enough to use a template (such as the one below), and then modify key pages with bespoke titles as needed.
[Type] [Key Attribute] [Brand] [Variant]
Which would generate a title like: Men’s Navy Wool Sweater – Medium
For larger catalogs, you should:
Set smart naming conventions.
Optimize high-value SKUs manually.
Avoid keyword stuffing; clarity wins.
Header Tags
Header tags shape how both users and search engines understand a product page. I’ve seen Magento themes sometimes misuse or duplicate headers, which weakens content structure and confuses algorithms trying to interpret page hierarchy.
A clean structure with one H1 for the product name helps search engines immediately identify the primary entity.
Supporting sections such as details, reviews, and shipping information should use H2 tags so AI systems and Google can parse the content into digestible, meaningful blocks. A structured hierarchy also improves accessibility and user experience, which, in turn, supports better engagement metrics and signals that modern AI‑enhanced ranking systems increasingly factor in.
Structured Data
Magento provides a basic layer of schema, but modern search and AI systems require richer, more complete product data. Enhanced product schema gives search engines precise information about what the product is, how it is priced, whether it is in stock, and what other attributes define it.
This matters because AI‑driven search experiences rely heavily on structured data to understand products as entities. Including fields like brand, GTIN, SKU, material, and size helps AI classify products correctly and match them to user intent.
AI‑driven search platforms evaluate far more than keywords. They look for clarity, completeness, and consumer‑ready information. Systems like Google AI Overviews and Perplexity need clean specifications, descriptive language, review signals, and trustworthy product attributes to surface a product confidently. When Magento product pages include well‑structured attributes, FAQs, clear specifications, and real user feedback, AI models can better determine relevance and usefulness. This not only improves visibility in AI‑generated summaries but also increases the likelihood of being surfaced as a recommended product in conversational search flows.
Product URLs
The structure of your product URLs plays a significant role in crawl efficiency and clarity.
Magento allows both category‑based URLs and top‑level product URLs, but the latter is usually better for SEO and AI systems. Clean, stable URLs reduce duplication and consolidate ranking signals into one definitive version of the page. When URLs change based on category paths, search engines may split authority across multiple versions or waste crawl budget on unnecessary duplicates.
For AI search systems, predictable URLs make it easier to associate product data with a single entity across the web. Using top‑level URLs, supported by strong internal linking and accurate canonicals, helps ensure that both search engines and AI models reference the correct version of the product page.
Faceted Navigation & Crawl Efficiency
Filters can easily create thousands of thin or duplicate pages. In 2026, the focus is not on hiding parameters but managing crawl paths and preserving essential category pages.
Use “noindex, follow” on filter pages if they must be accessible.
Avoid infinite combinations of parameters.
The old Google Search Console parameter tool is deprecated. Handle parameters via:
Robots rules (carefully).
Canonical tags.
Internal linking logic.
Smart sitemap control.
AJAX filtering is fine if you pair it with crawlable fallback links.
Ensure stateful URLs exist for important filtered views (e.g., size filters for apparel).
Product Filters should not hide useful product attributes. AI systems still need to understand sizing, material, price, and availability.
URL Rewrites & Duplicate Paths
Magento’s rewrite system is powerful but prone to creating duplicates if not managed carefully. Duplicate URLs dilute authority, create confusion for crawlers, and introduce unnecessary complexity for AI systems that depend on consistent signals. Issues like category paths reappearing, /catalog/ versions resurfacing, or numbered duplicates often stem from misconfigured rewrites or bulk product imports.
For SEO, duplicate paths waste crawl budget and risk indexing low‑quality or unintentional versions of a product page. For AI‑driven search, inconsistency makes it harder to map attributes, reviews, and pricing data to the correct canonical product. Regular rewrite table audits, strict redirect rules, and blocking system paths ensure search engines see only the correct version. Clean, predictable URL behavior is essential for long‑term organic stability.
Pagination
With Google no longer using rel=next/prev, the emphasis has shifted toward clarity, crawlability, and consistent content signals. Each paginated page should have its own unique title and H1, so search engines understand that these pages represent distinct sections of a category, not duplicates. Self‑canonicals prevent incorrect consolidation while still allowing discovery of deeper product listings.
For infinite scroll implementations, providing paginated fallbacks ensures that Google and AI systems can access all products, not just the first batch loaded on scroll. Proper pagination protects category visibility, prevents orphaned products, and ensures that AI models can access a full and accurate representation of your catalog.
Adobe Commerce Page Builder (ACP)
Adobe Commerce Page Builder (ACP) is becoming a central part of the Adobe Commerce ecosystem, offering a more streamlined and flexible way to manage content.
ACP could play a growing role in SEO and AI visibility because it supports cleaner markup, more consistent content structures, and modular components that search engines can interpret more easily. As AI-driven systems rely more on structured, reliable, and semantically organized content, ACP provides a foundation for producing consistent product pages, category templates, and merchandising blocks.
For merchants, ACP also reduces the risk of layout bloat since content blocks are standardized and optimized. This helps with performance and keeps Core Web Vitals healthy, a key factor for rankings and AI-driven discovery. Even if you cannot access ACP yet, planning for its adoption ensures your store remains future-ready.
Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)
The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is one of the most important emerging technologies for ecommerce, and Adobe Commerce merchants should begin preparing for its impact. Unlike Page Builder, this ACP refers to a protocol designed to help AI agents interact directly with online stores.
Screenshot from acp-magento.com, November 2025
AI agents, such as those in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s agentic systems, will increasingly handle tasks like comparing products, checking availability, and completing purchases on behalf of users. The Agentic Commerce Protocol standardizes how product data, pricing, stock status, and checkout operations are communicated to these agents.
For SEO and AI visibility, ACP represents a major shift. It allows AI systems to:
Access real‑time product information.
Evaluate product suitability based on user needs.
Complete actions such as adding products to carts.
Ensure product data is accurate and trustworthy.
For merchants, adopting ACP in the future means your products can be recommended, compared, and purchased through AI interfaces, not only through traditional search. Stores that implement ACP early will have a competitive advantage in AI‑driven discovery, especially as conversational shopping becomes normalized.
Even though ACP adoption is still developing, Adobe Commerce teams should begin preparing for:
Cleaner, more structured product data.
Accurate, machine‑readable availability and pricing.
Consistent taxonomy and attributes.
Technical readiness for API exposure and agent interactions.
Magento/Adobe Commerce can be a high-performing platform for search when built with technical SEO in mind. The key is to set strong foundations, efficient crawl paths, fast performance, structured data, and clarity for both users and AI systems.
Whether you are building yourself or working with developers, use this guide as a framework to ensure your Adobe Commerce store is set up for organic success in 2026 and beyond.
Key dates and notable events throughout the year can feed your content strategy and your social media marketing strategy. Timely aligning your digital campaigns with the right seasons for your brand is a staple part of creating a content calendar.
The SEJ marketing calendar includes dates from holiday dates to big sporting events to awareness months that you can plan content around for maximum engagement. We also include a template for you to plan your own calendar of relevant awareness dates.
Just review the full calendar of dates and copy across the dates you want to select for each month to create your own marketing calendar for 2026.
Use the dates as a starting point to help you brainstorm ideas and find opportunities for content that you can align to events throughout the year for a better chance of engagement.
Free Marketing Calendar And Template For 2026
Below, are listed many of the major holidays, events and obscure awareness days for 2026, month by month. There should be an event for every day of the year.
The full marketing calendar and template are available at the end of the article, with a breakdown of each month.
This calendar focuses mainly on the U.S. and Canada, with some major international and religious holidays included.
Your 2026 Holiday Marketing Calendar
Note: You can use this marketing calendar with our social media planner to keep your ideas, posts, and scheduling organized.
January
January is a time of resolutions and fresh starts, with many picking a goal for the year or looking to make a change.
It can be a slow start, given that many people are still recovering from the end of last year, but that gives you time to plan your calendar and ease into a new year of content.
There are plenty of broad activities to lean into, like Veganuary and National Hobby Month, to connect with audience lifestyles.
Events in January always have all eyes on them, too, like the Golden Globes and Winter X Games, so content around them can kickstart your 2026 engagement.
Monthly Holidays And Observances
International Creativity Month
National Blood Donor Month
National Braille Literacy Month
National Hobby Month
Dry January
Veganuary
Cervical Cancer Awareness Month
National Polka Music Month
National Skating Month
National Slow Cooking Month
National Soup Month
National Staying Healthy Month
National “Thank You” Month
National Train Your Dog Month
Weekly Observances
January 1 – 7 New Year’s Resolutions Week
January 1 – 7 Celebration of Life Week
January 12 – 18 National Pizza Week
January 12 – 18 Home Office and Security Week
January 19 – 25 Healthy Weight Week
Days
January 1 – New Year’s Day
January 1 – Global Family Day
January 2 – National Science Fiction Day
January 4 – World Braille Day
January 5 – National Screenwriters Day
January 6 – Epiphany
January 7 – Orthodox Christmas Day
January 11 – International Thank You Day
January 11 – 83rd Annual Golden Globe Awards
January 13 – Korean American Day
January 13 – Stephen Foster Memorial Day
January 14 – Orthodox New Year
January 14 – Ratification Day
January 17 – Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day
January 17 – Benjamin Franklin Day
January 19 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day
January 21 – National Hug Day
January 22 (to February 1) – Sundance Film Festival
January 23 – National Pie Day
January 23-25 – Winter X Games
January 24 – International Day of Education
January 27 – International Holocaust Remembrance Day
January 28 – Data Privacy Day
Popular Hashtags For January
#NewYearsDay
#ScienceFictionDay
#NationalTriviaDay
#NationalBirdDay
#NationalStickerDay
#GetToKnowYourCustomersDay
#CheeseLoversDay
#MLKDay
#NationalHuggingDay
#PieDay
#NationalComplimentDay
#PrivacyAware
February
Despite being the shortest month, February is full of interesting events you can leverage for your marketing campaigns. The month is centered on the theme of love (along with timely observances like American Heart Month), so it’s a relatable theme for brands to craft creative campaigns around couples and community.
The colder days can leave people looking for things to get involved with from the comfort of their homes. So, make sure your content is working in line with popular days to attract people to your organization’s content.
February may be short, but it offers plenty of opportunities to tap into the heart of the season and connect with your audience.
Monthly Holidays And Observances
Black History Month
American Heart Month
National Heart Month
National Weddings Month
National Cancer Prevention Month
National Library Lovers Month
Celebration of Chocolate Month
Weekly Observances
February 7-13 – African Heritage and Health Week
February 9-15 – Freelance Writers Appreciation Week
February 9-15 – International Flirting Week
February 11-16 – New York Fashion Week
February 14-20 – Random Acts of Kindness Week
February 16-22 – Engineers’ Week
February 17-23 – National Pancake Week
February 24-March 2 – National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
Days
February 1 – First Day of Black History Month
February 1 – National Freedom Day
February 1 – National Change Your Password Day
February 1 – 68th Annual Grammy Awards
February 2 – Groundhog Day
February 4 – World Cancer Day
February 5 – National Girls and Women in Sports Day
February 8 – Super Bowl LX
February 9 – National Pizza Day
February 11 – International Day of Women and Girls in Science
February 12 – Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday
February 12 – Red Hand Day
February 12 – Georgia Day
February 12 – Darwin Day
February 13 – World Radio Day
February 13-15 – NBA All-Star Weekend
February 14 – Valentine’s Day
February 15 – Susan B. Anthony’s Birthday
February 16 – Presidents’ Day
February 17 – Lunar New Year
February 17 – Mardi Gras
February 17-18 (estimated) – Ramadan Begins
February 22 – George Washington’s Birthday
Popular Hashtags For February
#GroundhogDay
#WorldCancerDay
#NationalWeatherpersonsDay
#SendACardToAFriendDay
#BoyScoutsDay
#NationalPizzaDay
#ValentinesDay
#RandomActsOfKindnessDay
#PresidentsDay
#LoveYourPetDay
March
March marks the beginning of spring, and the days start to get longer. Whether March Madness turns up the heat or Pi Day inspires a little fun, there are plenty of exciting events to get your content involved with.
Some of the monthly observances, such as Women’s History Month or The Great American Cleanup, can serve as great causes for regular engagement this month.
Monthly Observances
Women’s History Month
Nutrition Month
Music in Our Schools Month
National Craft Month
American Red Cross Month
Irish-American Heritage Month
Ramadan (projected to end on March 18-19)
Weekly Observances
March 9-15 – Girl Scout Week
March 9-15 – National Sleep Awareness Week
March 18-24 – National Agriculture Week
March 23-29 – National Cleaning Week
Days
March 1 – Zero Discrimination Day
March 3 – World Wildlife Day
March 3 – National Anthem Day
March 4 – International HPV Awareness Day
March 6 – Global Unplugging Day
March 7 – Employee Appreciation Day
March 8 – International Women’s Day
March 8 – Daylight Saving Time
March 13 – Purim
March 13 – World Sleep Day
March 14 – Pi Day
March 15 – The Ides of March
March 15 – 98th Academy Awards Ceremony
March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day
March 18 – Global Recycling Day
March 18-19 (expected) – Ramadan ends
March 19-20 (expected) – Eid Al-Fitr
March 20 – Nowruz
March 20 – Spring Equinox
March 22 – World Water Day
March 26 – Epilepsy Awareness Day
March 27 – World Theatre Day
March 27 – MLB Opening Day
March 29 – Palm Sunday
Popular Hashtags for March
#PeanutButterLoversDay
#EmployeeAppreciationDay
#ReadAcrossAmerica
#DrSeuss
#WorldWildlifeDay
#NationalGrammarDay
#BeBoldForChange
#DaylightSavings
#PiDay
#StPatricksDay
#FirstDayofSpring
#WorldWaterDay
#NationalPuppyDay
#PurpleDay
#NationalDoctorsDay
#EarthHour
April
April is probably best known for April Fools’ Day, and a chance to get creative with parody and spoof content for your calendar that can make your customers smile.
Earth Month also means you can make more eco-friendly posts about your organization’s commitment to reducing its impact on the planet.
You also might want to get your cape out of storage on April 28 for National Superhero Day.
Monthly Observances
Earth Month
National Autism Awareness Month
Parkinson’s Awareness Month
Celebrate Diversity Month
Stress Awareness Month
Weekly Observances
April 20-26 – National Volunteer Week
April 20-26 – Administrative Professionals Week
April 21-25 – Every Kid Healthy Week
April 21-27 – Animal Cruelty/Human Violence Awareness Week
Days
April 1 – April Fool’s Day
April 1 – Passover starts
April 2 – World Autism Awareness Day
April 2 – International Children’s Book Day
April 2 – National Walking Day
April 2 – Maundy Thursday
April 3 – Good Friday
April 4 – Holy Saturday
April 5 – Easter Sunday
April 6 – Easter Monday
April 7 – National Beer Day
April 7 – World Health Day
April 9-12 – Masters Tournament PGA
April 9 – Passover ends
April 11 – National Pet Day
April 11-13/18-20 – Coachella Music Festival
April 13 – Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday
April 13-14 – Yom HaShoah (Begins evening, ends April 14)
April 13-15 – Songkran
April 15 – American Sign Language Day
April 15 – Tax Day
April 16 – Emancipation Day
April 20 – Patriots’ Day
April 21 – World Creativity and Innovation Day
April 22 – Yom Ha’atzmaut (sundown April 21 to nightfall April 22)
April 22 – Earth Day
April 25 – Arbor Day
April 27 – World Design Day
April 28 – National Superhero Day
April 30 – National Honesty Day
Popular Hashtags For April:
#AprilFools
#WAAD
#FindARainbowDay
#NationalWalkingDay
#LetsTalk
#EqualPayDay
#TaxDay
#NH5D
#NationalLookAlikeDay
#AdministrativeProfessionalsDay
#DenimDay
#EndMalariaForGood
#COUNTONME
#ArborDay
#NationalHonestyDay
#AdoptAShelterPetDay
May
May brings a lot of variety with it as there are plenty of good causes to raise awareness for, plus major sporting events and unique celebrations you can join in with.
Cinco de Mayo, the Kentucky Derby, and Memorial Day are just a few examples of events that will have lots of people paying attention and can make for great marketing themes.
Monthly Observances
ALS Awareness
Asthma Awareness Month
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
Jewish American Heritage Month
National Celiac Disease Awareness Month
National Clean Air Month
Better Sleep Month
Lupus Awareness Month
Weekly Observances
May 4-10 – National Pet Week
May 4-10 – National Travel & Tourism Week
May 4-10 – Drinking Water Week
May 6-12 – National Nurses Week
May 11-17 – Food Allergy Awareness Week
Days
May 1 – May Day
May 1 – Law Day
May 1 – Lei Day
May 1 – World Password Day
May 2 – Kentucky Derby
May 4 – Star Wars Day
May 4 – International Firefighters Day
May 5 – Cinco De Mayo
May 6 – National Nurses Day
May 8 – World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day
May 10 – World Lupus Day
May 10 – World Fair Trade Day
May 10 – Mother’s Day
May 15-18 – PGA Championship
May 15 – International Day of Families
May 15 – Malcolm X Day
May 17 – Internet Day
May 18 – National HIV Vaccine Awareness Day
May 18 – Victoria Day (Canada)
May 20 – World Bee Day
May 21 – World Meditation Day
May 24-June 7 – French Open
May 25 – Geek Pride Day
May 25 – Memorial Day
May 28 – World Hunger Day
Popular Hashtags For May:
#RedNoseDay
#MayDay
#WorldPasswordDay
#StarWarsDay & #Maythe4thBeWithYou
#InternationalFirefightersDay
#CincoDeMayo
#MothersDay
#BTWD
#MemorialDay & #MDW
June
Once June has arrived, it’s finally starting to feel like summer. Everyone wants to make the most of the sunshine, and the positive energies are flowing.
Given that June also marks Great Outdoors Month, this is a great opportunity to make your brand a must-have companion for planning a beachside vacation or hosting a cookout.
You can also show your support for LGBTQ+ Pride, Flag Day, and Father’s Day, along with all the other events listed here.
Monthly Observances
LGBTQ Pride Month
Caribbean-American Heritage Month
Great Outdoors Month
Men’s Health Month
National Safety Month
National Zoo and Aquarium Month
Weekly Observances
June 1-7 – National Garden Week
June 1-7 – National Headache Awareness Week
June 9-15 – National Men’s Health Week
June 15-21 – National Roller Coaster Week
Days
June 1 – Global Parents Day
June 5 – Hot Air Balloon Day
June 5 – World Environment Day
June 6 – D-Day
June 6 – Belmont Stakes
June 8 – World Oceans Day
June 8 – National Best Friends Day
June 8 – Tony Awards TBD/expected timeframe
June 9 – Donald Duck Day
June 11 – Kamehameha Day
June 11-14 – Bonnaroo Music Festival
June 14 – National Flag Day
June 15 – Trinity Sunday
June 18-21 – U.S. Open PGA
June 19 – Juneteenth
June 19 – Chinese Dragon Boat Festival
June 21 – Father’s Day
June 21 – Summer Solstice
June 23 – International Widows Day
June 25-26 – Ashura
June 29-July 12 – Wimbledon
June 30 – International Asteroid Day
Popular Hashtags For June:
#NationalDonutDay
#FathersDay
#NationalSelfieDay
#TakeYourDogToWorkDay
#HandshakeDay
#SMDay
July
July presents lots of opportunities for savvy marketers, from the 4th of July to the International Day of Friendship.
As we enter the summer slowdown period, there’s a lot to celebrate that can help feed your social media content to keep customers engaged.
So celebrate your independence, indulge in a little ice cream, and bring people together with one of the many events in July.
Monthly Observances
Family Golf Month
Ice Cream Month
National Parks and Recreation Month
National Picnic Month
National Independent Retailer Month
National Blueberry Month
Weekly Observances
July 6–12 – Nude Recreation Week
July 14-20 – Capture the Sunset Week
Days
July 1 – International Joke Day
July 2 – World UFO Day
July 4 – Independence Day (Observed Friday, July 3)
July 4-26 – Tour de France
July 6 – International Kissing Day
July 7 – World Chocolate Day
July 8 – National Video Games Day
July 11 – World Population Day
July 12 – Pecan Pie Day
July 14 – MLB All-Star Game
July 16 – Moon Landing Anniversary
July 17 – World Emoji Day
July 18 – Nelson Mandela International Day
July 20 – International Chess Day
July 20 – National Moon Day
July 21 – National Junk Food Day
July 24 – Amelia Earhart Day
July 26 – Aunt and Uncle Day
July 27 – Parents’ Day
July 28 – World Hepatitis Day
July 30 – International Day of Friendship
July 31 – World Ranger Day
Popular Hashtags For July:
#NationalPostalWorkerDay
#WorldUFODay
#WorldEmojiDay
#DayOfFriendship
August
We’ve hit the hottest days by August as back-to-school looms, and we welcome the return of football.
While many are topping up their tans and making the most of the final Summer days, August still provides lots of opportunities to align your content with wider events.
Make sure you’re using your marketing calendar to the fullest extent to post any sunny seasonal content promptly before fall arrives.
Monthly Observances
Back to School Month
National Breastfeeding Month
Family Fun Month
National Peach Month
Weekly Observances
August 1-7 – International Clown Week
August 3-9 – National Farmers’ Market Week
August 10-16 – National Smile Week
August 25-31 – Be Kind to Humankind Week
Days
August 1 – National Girlfriends Day
August 2 – NFL Hall of Fame Game & Pre-season
August 2 – National Friendship Day
August 7 – Purple Heart Day
August 7 – International Beer Day
August 8 – International Cat Day
August 9 – Book Lover’s Day
August 11 – National Son and Daughter Day
August 11 – Victory Day
August 13 – Left Hander’s Day
August 15 – Assumption of Mary
August 15 – National Honey Bee Day
August 19 – World Humanitarian Day
August 20 – National Radio Day
August 21 – Senior Citizens Day
August 26 – Women’s Equality Day
August 28 – Raksha Bandhan
August 30 – Frankenstein Day
August 30 – National Beach Day
Popular Hashtags For August:
#InternationalCatDay
#NationalBookLoversDay
#WorldElephantDay
#LefthandersDay
#WorldPhotoDay
#WorldHumanitarianDay
#NationalLemonadeDay
#NationalDogDay
#WomensEqualityDay
September
As fall begins, some of the bigger events happening in September are Hispanic Heritage Month, Grandparents Day, and, of course, Labor Day.
There are also plenty of other events to inspire you, from Oktoberfest to National Yoga Month. Plus, a National Coffee Day for those who struggle to start their day without a caffeine fix.
Monthly Observances
Wilderness Month
National Food Safety Education Month
National Yoga Month
Whole Grains Month
Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15)
Weekly Observances
September 7-13 – National Suicide Prevention Week
September 13-19 – National Indoor Plant Week
September 15-21 – Pollution Prevention Week
September 21-27 – National Dog Week
Days
September 2 – VJ Day
September 4 – National Wildlife Day
September 5 – International Day of Charity
September 6 – National Fight Procrastination Day
September 7 – Labor Day
September 8 – Pardon Day
September 11 – 9/11
September 11 – Patriot Day
September 12 – Video Games Day
September 13 – Uncle Sam Day
September 13 – National Grandparents Day
September 15 – Greenpeace Day
September 17 – Constitution Day
September 19 – Oktoberfest begins
September 20 – Yom Kippur
September 21 – International Day of Peace
September 22 – World Car-Free Day
September 23 – September Equinox
September 24 – World Bollywood Day
September 25 – Native American Day
September 27 – World Tourism Day
September 29 – National Coffee Day (US)
September 29 – Confucius Day
September 29 – World Heart Day
Popular Hashtags For September:
#LaborDay
#NationalWildlifeDay
#CharityDay
#ReadABookDay
#911Day
#NationalVideoGamesDay
#TalkLikeAPirateDay
#PeaceDay
#CarFreeDay
#WorldRabiesDay
#GoodNeighborDay
#InternationalPodcastDay
October
It’s that time of year when pumpkin spice lattes roll around again.
While October is known as the spooky season to many, there’s much more to this month than just Halloween. There’s Teacher’s Day, World Mental Health Day, and Spirit Day, to name a few, around which your organization can look to create content.
Monthly Observances
Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Bully Prevention Month
Halloween Safety Month
Financial Planning Month
National Pizza Month
Weekly Observances
October 5-11 – Fire Prevention Week
October 13-19 – Earth Science Week
October 19-25 – National Business Women’s Week
Days
October 1 – International Coffee Day
October 1 – World Vegetarian Day
October 3 – National Techies Day
October 5 – World Teachers’ Day
October 5 – Oktoberfest ends
October 5 – Child Health Day
October 10 – World Mental Health Day
October 11 – National Coming Out Day
October 12 – Indigenous Peoples’ Day
October 12 – Columbus Day
October 12 – Thanksgiving Day (Canada)
October 16 – World Food Day
October 16 – Spirit Day (Anti-bullying)
October 17 – Sweetest Day
October 24 – United Nations Day
October 24 – Make a Difference Day
October 30 – Mischief Night
October 31 – Halloween
Popular Hashtags For October:
#InternationalCoffeeDay
#TechiesDay
#NationalTacoDay
#WorldSmileDay
#WorldTeachersDay
#WorldHabitatDay
#WorldMentalHealthDay
#BossesDay
#UNDay
#ChecklistDay
#Halloween
November
During the month in which we all give thanks, there is also a wide range of causes you can help out with or raise awareness for, like Movember and America Recycles Day.
You should also mark your marketing calendar for arguably the biggest sales events of the year – Black Friday and Cyber Monday – which are sure to be on everyone’s radar.
Monthly Observances
Native American Heritage Month
Movember
World Vegan Month
Novel Writing Month
National Gratitude Month
Weekly Observances
November 17-21 – American Education Week
November 20-26 – Game and Puzzle Week
Days
November 1 – Day of the Dead/Día de los Muertos
November 1 – All Saints’ Day
November 1 – World Vegan Day
November 1 – Daylight Saving Time ends
November 3 – Melbourne Cup Day
November 8 – STEM Day
November 8 – Diwali
November 9 – World Freedom Day
November 10 – Marine Corps Birthday
November 11 – Veterans Day
November 13 – World Kindness Day
November 14 – World Diabetes Day
November 17 – National Entrepreneurs Day
November 24 – Evolution Day
November 26 – Thanksgiving Day
November 27 – Black Friday
November 28 – Native American Heritage Day
November 30 – Cyber Monday
Popular Hashtags For November:
#WorldVeganDay
#NationalSandwichDay
#DaylightSavings
#CappuccinoDay
#STEMDay
#VeteransDay
#WKD
#WDD
#BeRecycled
#EntrepreneursDay
#Thanksgiving
#ShopSmall
December
December is here, and the end of the year is in sight.
Although 2027 is right around the corner, and you might want to start planning your content calendar for next year, don’t neglect your content in the run-up to the holidays.
Send your year off in style with marketing campaigns dedicated to events like Nobel Prize Day, Rosa Parks Day, Green Monday, and more.
You can even do a content wrap-up of your best moments from the year – and make sure to get your 2027 marketing calendar sorted early before the post-Christmas wind-down.
Monthly Observances
Human Rights Month
Operation Santa Paws
Safe Toys and Gifts Month
World Food Service Safety Month
Weekly Observances
December 4-12 – Hanukkah (Chanukah)
December 26-January 1 – Kwanzaa
Days
December 1 – World AIDS Day
December 1 – Rosa Parks Day
December 3 – International Day of Persons with Disabilities
December 6 – St. Nicholas Day
December 7 – Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
December 7 – National Letter Writing Day
December 8 – Feast of the Immaculate Conception
December 10 – Nobel Prize Day
December 10 – Human Rights Day
December 11 – UNICEF Anniversary
December 12 – Hanukkah (end of)
December 15 – Bill of Rights Day
December 18 – National Twin Day
December 21 – Winter Solstice
December 22 – Forefathers Day
December 23 – Festivus
December 24 – Christmas Eve
December 25 – Christmas Day
December 26 – Kwanzaa
December 26 – Boxing Day
December 31 – New Year’s Eve
Popular Hashtags For December:
#IDPWD
#NationalCookieDay
#NobelPrize
#WinterSolstice
#NYE
The Complete Marketing Calendar And Template To Plan 2026
A content plan mapped out months in advance gives you a reliable foundation to work from all year, without trying to think of ideas at the last minute.
Track what performs well throughout the year and use those insights to inform your 2026 marketing calendar, so you can invest more heavily in the content themes that consistently deliver results.
It’s a “complex and subtle emotion that elicits feelings of comfort, serenity, and a gentle sense of floating.” It’s peaceful, but more ephemeral and intangible than contentment. It might be evoked by the sight of a sunset or a moody, low-key album.
If you haven’t ever felt this sensation—or even heard of it—that’s not surprising. A Reddit user named noahjeadie generated it with ChatGPT, along with advice on how to evoke the feeling. With the right essential oils and soundtrack, apparently, you too can feel like “a soft fuzzy draping ghost floating through a lavender suburb.”
Don’t scoff: Researchers say more and more terms for these “neo-emotions” are showing up online, describing new dimensions and aspects of feeling. Velvetmist was a key example in a journal article about the phenomenon published in July 2025. But most neo-emotions aren’t the inventions of emo artificial intelligences. Humans come up with them, and they’re part of a big change in the way researchers are thinking about feelings, one that emphasizes how people continuously spin out new ones in response to a changing world.
Velvetmist might’ve been a chatbot one-off, but it’s not unique. The sociologist Marci Cottingham—whose 2024 paper got this vein of neo-emotion research started—cites many more new terms in circulation. There’s “Black joy” (Black people celebrating embodied pleasure as a form of political resistance), “trans euphoria” (the joy of having one’s gender identity affirmed and celebrated), “eco-anxiety” (the hovering fear of climate disaster), “hypernormalization” (the surreal pressure to continue performing mundane life and labor under capitalism during a global pandemic or fascist takeover), and the sense of “doom” found in “doomer” (one who is relentlessly pessimistic) or “doomscrolling” (being glued to an endless feed of bad news in an immobilized state combining apathy and dread).
Of course, emotional vocabulary is always evolving. During the Civil War, doctors used the centuries-old term “nostalgia,” combining the Greek words for “returning home”and “pain,” to describe a sometimes fatal set of symptoms suffered by soldiers—a condition we’d probably describe today as post-traumatic stress disorder. Now nostalgia’s meaning has mellowed and faded to a gentle affection for an old cultural product or vanished way of life. And people constantly import emotion words from other cultures when they’re convenient or evocative—like hygge (the Danish word for friendly coziness) or kvell (a Yiddish term for brimming over with happy pride).
Cottingham believes that neo-emotions are proliferating as people spend more of their lives online. These coinages help us relate to one another and make sense of our experiences, and they get a lot of engagement on social media. So even when a neo-emotion is just a subtle variation on, or combination of, existing feelings, getting super-specific about those feelings helps us reflect and connect with other people. “These are potentially signals that tell us about our place in the world,” she says.
These neo-emotions are part of a paradigm shift in emotion science. For decades, researchers argued that humans all share a set of a half-dozen or so basic emotions. But over the last decade, Lisa Feldman Barrett, a clinical psychologist at Northeastern University, has become one of the most cited scientists in the world for work demonstrating otherwise. By using tools like advanced brain imaging and studying babies and people from relatively isolated cultures, she has concluded there’s no such thing as a basic emotional palette. The way we experience and talk about our feelings is culturally determined. “How do you know what anger and sadness and fear are? Because somebody taught you,” Barrett says.
If there are no true “basic” biological emotions, this puts more emphasis on social and cultural variations in how we interpret our experiences. And these interpretations can change over time. “As a sociologist, we think of all emotions as created,” Cottingham says. Just like any other tool humans make and use, “emotions are a practical resource people are using as they navigate the world.”
Some neo-emotions, like velvetmist, might be mere novelties. Barrett playfully suggests “chiplessness” to describe the combined hunger, frustration, and relief of getting to the bottom of the bag. But others, like eco-anxiety and Black joy, can take on a life of their own and help galvanize social movements.
Both reading about and crafting your own neo-emotions, with or without chatbot assistance, could be surprisingly helpful. Lots of research supports the benefits of emotional granularity. Basically, the more detailed and specific words you can use to describe your emotions, both positive and negative, the better.
Researchers analogize this “emodiversity” to biodiversity or cultural diversity, arguing that a more diverse world is more enriched. It turns out that people who exhibit higher emotional granularity go to the doctor less frequently, spend fewer days hospitalized for illness, and are less likely to drink when stressed, drive recklessly, or smoke cigarettes. And many studies show emodiversity is a skill that, with training, people can develop at any age. Just imagine cruising into this sweet, comforting future. Is the idea giving you a certain dreamy thrill?
Are you sure you’ve never felt velvetmist?
Anya Kamenetz is a freelance education reporter who writes the Substack newsletter The Golden Hour.
Since 2016 I’ve published a weekly rundown of new services for ecommerce merchants. This final 2025 installment includes updates on mobile apps, hosting, ecommerce accelerators, avatars, review management, email marketing, agentic commerce, and video creation.
Got an ecommerce product release? Email updates@practicalecommerce.com.
New Tools for Merchants
MobiLoud launches analytics dashboard for mobile apps.MobiLoud, a mobile app builder, has launched an AI-powered analytics dashboard. According to MobiLoud, the dashboard provides merchants with real-time, actionable insights into their mobile apps’ performance and incremental value. The dashboard centralizes data into a single view, including revenue, conversions, user engagement, retention, app versus website, and more.
MobiLoud
Hosted.com launches infrastructure enhancements for WordPress.Hosted.com has updated its WordPress hosting platform. Per Hosted.com, the improvements include advanced server architecture, enhanced processing and resource allocation, and refined caching and database systems to maintain performance and uptime. The update also provides database configurations that support WordPress, handle content-heavy websites, and improve querying and page responsiveness.
Ecommerce accelerator CPGIO expands footprint with marketplace launches.CPGIO, an ecommerce accelerator for consumer brands, has announced new marketplace partnerships with Nordstrom, Chewy, Lowe’s, Faire, and Best Buy. CPGIO says these additions give brands access to more than 40 retail channels, reinforcing the company’s ecommerce position and enabling it to deliver actionable insights and performance controls.
Aarav Solutions launches AI-powered CPQ chatbot on Odoo.Aarav Solutions, specializing in AI-driven accelerators, has launched a configure, price, quote chatbot on Odoo. This new conversational tool enables customers to configure products, receive real-time pricing, apply eligible discounts, and complete orders through a guided experience. Per Aarav Solutions, the Odoo-native chatbot (i) helps businesses move beyond form-driven CPQ workflows and (ii) operates within product catalogs, customer-specific price lists, discount rules, and fulfillment constraints.
NewMedia.com launches agency services for ChatGPT.NewMedia.com, an ecommerce marketing agency, has announced its ChatGPT visibility services to help brands optimize for generative search and large-language-model discovery. NewMedia.com helps businesses improve visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini, and conversational search systems.
GBPPromote launches Google reviews management software.GBPPromote, a platform focused on Google Business Profiles for agencies and businesses, has launched its Google reviews management software to help companies manage reviews, protect their online reputation, and build trust with consumers. Per GBPPromote, features include one-click review replies, custom QR codes to help customers easily leave reviews, automated review requests, negative-review flagging, sentiment analysis and insights, instant review alerts, multi-location management, and a central dashboard for reviews from all locations.
Joyz Cloudtech launches customer service chatbot for businesses. India-based Joyz Cloudtech has launched a custom AI chatbot that helps businesses manage customer queries and support across websites, WhatsApp, Instagram, and custom apps. JoyzAI aims to handle customer queries, reducing the operational load on human support teams by automating routine and repetitive tasks. Joyz states businesses can train the new tool on specific information to deliver responses aligned with their products, services, and policies.
JoyzAI
MuleRun launches Creator Studio for AI agent monetization.MuleRun, an AI agent marketplace, has launched a platform to help creators build, publish, and monetize AI agents. The new Creator Studio can develop agents using various tools or models and provide access to multiple LLMs and multimodal APIs. MuleRun also announced its upcoming agent builder, a natural-language-powered tool that enables users without coding experience to create agents using ideas and plain language and publish them directly on MuleRun.
Optimove updates email marketing tool.Optimove, an AI-powered marketing platform, has released an update to its email marketing tool. New features include an open data structure to sync templates with external data sources, AI content recommendation agents, an engine to trigger custom emails based on external events, interactive components via email widgets, and a Liquid-based syntax to insert data, apply logic, and structure dynamic content at scale.
TemVideo launches AI video creator for marketing.TemVideo has launched its platform to create marketing videos without requiring complex prompts. Users upload a product image, and TemVideo’s AI analyzes features, audience, and scenarios, then generates a story-driven 45-to-90-second marketing video.
Buzzy launches platform to generate video ideas from social trends.Buzzy, an AI video generator, has launched a platform to help creators and brands generate content ideas by analyzing social media trends. The platform’s goal is to structure creativity around real-time data, providing marketers with guidance on video content and publishing it directly on social media platforms through Buzzy.
George W. Bush had just begun his second presidential term when we launched Practical Ecommerce in mid-2005. An innovative ecommerce platform (requiring no software downloads!) would soon debut in Canada. The founders, former snowboard sellers, called it Shopify.
Like many of you, we’ve experienced the rise of cloud computing, social media, logistics, and marketplaces, but nothing compares to the disruption of artificial intelligence. Apparently, our audience agrees.
We published roughly 300 articles in 2025. Of the 25 most read, 17 addressed AI.
Having completed our 20th year, I’m grateful. Grateful for being part of a progressive industry. Grateful to our advertisers, our colleagues. Grateful to our contributors — the genius of Armando Roggio, the great Ann Smarty, screenwriter-turned-reporter Sig Ueland, entrepreneur Eric Bandholz, ad guru Matt Umbro, so many more.
I’m grateful to Joy, my accountant and co-owner wife who manages all financial aspects of this business. Never have I labored over payroll, payables, tax returns, financial statements, banks. Joy does all of that and more.
Finally, I’m grateful to our readers. Without you, there is no Practical Ecommerce.
Retail media advertisers can now run placements on enterprise ecommerce sites via Google’s Search Ads 360 platform, upending the digital retail media market. Read more >
Shoppers who ask AI for product recommendations bypass traditional review sites, potentially causing lost or unattributed traffic from affiliates. Read more >
Enterprise SEO is at the center of some fascinating and fundamental shifts right now. From mainstream media coverage in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes to the Associated Press, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and more. The role of search and SEO and its impact on enterprise brands and their visibility in a new AI era made all the headlines.
In this article, I will delve deeper into five key enterprise SEO and AI trends for 2026 with tips to help you keep pace with change and prepare for future success.
Image by author, December 2025
How Enterprise SEO Has Changed
As we enter 2026, enterprise SEO strategies will shift in line with the significant changes in how users search and interact across multiple search and AI engines, from discovery to conversion.
The new reality facing enterprises is that search behavior is no longer linear or universal as user behavior shifts from single-destination search to multi-platform conversations.
While Google remains dominant with 90% market share, the growth and evolution of AI discovery engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity mean marketers are not just optimizing for traditional search; they are also optimizing for AI and LLM visibility.
The need for “Search Everywhere Optimization” has become critical for large enterprises as generative and answer-based AI engines form their own “opinions” and outputs that influence a brand’s presence (are they discoverable) and whether they are recommended (how they are perceived).
Brands that have invested in core, foundational SEO and adapt to the nuances of being visible and cited as the trusted and authoritative source in their industry across multiple AI platforms already have a huge head start in 2026.
5 Essential Enterprise SEO And AI Trends To Watch In 2026
1. SEO Fundamentals Become The Bedrock For AI Success Everywhere
SEO foundations are the prerequisite for AI visibility: without clean technicals, strong information architecture, and quality content. Without it, generative (GEO) and answer-based (AEO) efforts simply have nothing reliable for AI systems to ingest, understand, or cite. In practice, generative and answer-based AI optimization is less a replacement for SEO and more an evolution layered on top of it. Both evolve together.
Technical SEO (crawlability, indexation, architecture, Core Web Vitals, structured data) is what makes your content machine-readable for LLM crawlers and AI overview systems. Classic SEO pillars – intent-mapped content, E-E-A-T signals, internal linking, and performance – are the signals AI systems and answer engines lean on to choose which sources to surface and trust.
All AI optimization strategies build directly on these foundations with the additional focus on restructuring sites and content, so generative engines can parse entities and quote or cite them in answers.
Foundational SEO technical elements act as a translation layer between your content and AI systems. With schema markup, you provide AI engines with a roadmap to understand:
Customer Q&As and help resources.
Detailed product specifications and features.
User feedback and testimonials.
Content creator expertise and qualifications.
I expect all these new types of AI optimization disciplines to mature further in the coming years as more brands and marketing experts lean into experienced SEOs for advice on how LLMs retrieve, rank, and cite sources.
Optimization For The Agentic Era
AI agents are now browsing on behalf of users—not just indexing for later but fetching information in real time. BrightEdge internal tracking shows these agents now account for roughly 33% of organic search activity, and that share is climbing.
These agents, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Perplexity Bot, and Google-Extended, represent a major shift in how content gets discovered and delivered. They do not render JavaScript, require high performance, and need plain-text information to assist users in the moment. Brands that are not visible to AI crawlers risk being invisible to the next generation of consumers. In this new era, brands must optimise for agent conversions—making it easy for AI to retrieve information, present it accurately, and drive action.
Key focus areas:
Technical Fundamentals: Prioritise site speed, crawlability, and technical health so AI agents can access your content in real-time conversations.
Content Structure: Clear content hierarchy, descriptive product information, and logical page structure help AI agents understand and recommend your offerings.
Structured Data: Implement schema markup so agents accurately understand pricing, availability, reviews, and specifications.
AI-Ready Protocols: Adopt standards like MCP servers and llms.txt files to guide AI crawlers to important content efficiently.
2. Content Quality Becomes The Differentiator For AI Visibility
E-E-A-T and content diversity will matter more than ever for SEO and AI success.
Top-performing content will prioritize clarity and cognitive ease, delivering high information value while minimizing effort for the reader. AI tools do not cite content that repackages existing information; they can generate that themselves. What they do cite are unique insights, original content, and trusted sources.
Content Tips For Winning AI Visibility
Open with concise, insight-led summaries.
Structure with tight sections and clear headings.
Lead with story, then data – relatable anecdotes improve engagement and make content quotable.
Write for ingestion. Use questions, definitions, and concise examples that LLMs can absorb.
Optimizing For Multimodal Search
Text-based search is no longer the sole player. Multimodal search – combining text, voice, image, and video – is becoming standard practice. BrightEdge data shows a 121% increase in ecommerce-related YouTube citations for AI Overviews.
Image from author, December 2025
Repurpose content across formats. Do not rely solely on written content.
Invest in utility-driven content: calculators, templates, checklists, and tools.
Share content on channels AI tools regularly pull from: Reddit, YouTube, and key social networks.
Implement detailed technical markup for videos and images.
Building For Query Fan-Out
To succeed, brands must move beyond static rankings and build omnichannel content networks that meet users wherever their queries lead. Brands that demonstrate how their products solve specific problems will win in AI search. Buyers increasingly expect AI to recommend the best solution for their situation.
Rebuild strategies around audience personas and user intent.
Map the related questions and variations triggered by core topics.
Create interconnected content ecosystems distributed across platforms so all LLMs can cite.
Design content as training data – extractable, semantically rich, and machine-readable.
Publishing across multiple content formats increases citation stability:
For Google AI: Focus on visual assets and shopping feed optimization. Users are in discovery mode and expect product-rich experiences. Ensure structured data enables inclusion in AI Overviews and Shopping Graph integration.
For ChatGPT: Build authority through comprehensive, well-structured content. Users arrive pre-qualified and deeper in the funnel. Optimize for being cited as a trusted source when ChatGPT synthesizes answers.
For Perplexity: Prioritize authoritative, citation-worthy content. Users actively verify sources and click through at higher rates. Deliver research-grade content that earns consistent citations.
3. Measuring Brand Authority Will Shift From Presence To Perception
New SEO and AI measurement methods evolve from brand mentions to “how” they are mentioned.
As more users turn to AI assistants for early-stage answers, top-of-funnel content will shift from search visibility to model influence. LLMs have become the new awareness engines. The brands appearing in AI answers will dominate through education and earning citations from trusted sources.
Brand Sentiment And Trust
In 2026, brand visibility in AI search will hinge on trust. Earned media—social mentions, reviews, quality backlinks—shapes how AI models and users perceive your brand. LLMs prioritize content from trusted, credible sources.
Five Essential AI Search Metrics:
AI Presence Rate: Percentage of target queries where your brand appears in AI responses.
Citation Authority: How consistently you are cited as the primary source.
Share of AI Conversation: Your semantic real estate in AI answers versus competitors.
Prompt Effectiveness: How well your content answers natural language prompts.
Response-to-Conversion Velocity: How quickly AI-influenced prospects convert.
Brands with strong pre-existing recognition will receive more positive mentions in AI responses. For marketers, the measurement mindset shift is important. Instead of competing for a spot on a results page, you’re competing to be referenced as a trusted source inside the answer itself.
Marketers must optimize for influence, shaping the informational environment so machines and people understand their brand as intended.
4. Multi-Platform Success Demands New SEO And Marketing Approaches To AI
Organizations will need integrated SEO, media, and PR strategies.
The complexity of modern enterprise marketing demands a new organizational approach. Success requires seamless integration between SEO, content, technical teams, and AI specialists.
SEO is becoming inseparable from brand and omnichannel marketing. Key integration requirements:
Align paid and organic messaging. Ads and AI summaries frequently appear side by side.
Coordinate PR and content. Third-party coverage directly influences AI citations.
Expand brand mentions with influencers and affiliates for product-led searches.
Digital PR Becomes A Core SEO And AI Success Factor
Earned media has become essential for securing mentions and citations in AI-driven search. As LLMs and generative engines decide which sources to reference, brands must focus on building trust, authority, and credibility within their field of specialism. This means going beyond traditional link-building to cultivate genuine recognition from industry publications, respected analysts, and trusted voices in your sector. The brands that consistently appear in high-quality editorial coverage, expert roundups, and authoritative reviews will be the ones AI systems learn to trust and recommend.
How to implement:
Treat branded search volume as a vital top-of-funnel metric.
Build relationships with publishers, influencers, and review platforms.
Activate internal thought leaders for interviews, podcasts, and expert commentary.
Monitor your AI visibility and track brand representation across platforms.
5. Automation Becomes Non-Negotiable For SEO And AI Scale
Large enterprises will need to rely on automation to scale SEO and AI performance.
The complexity of managing SEO across traditional search and multiple AI platforms is becoming immense. Ensuring sites are structured for agentic crawl visibility, managing fixes that impact performance at speed, and producing content at scale make manual SEO tasks unsustainable, hampering productivity and performance.
Automation is no longer a competitive advantage; it’s a requirement for AI survival.
AI Visibility Monitoring: Track brand presence across AI platforms automatically. Manual checking is impossible at scale.
Content Optimization: Use AI tools to find gaps, optimize structure, and ensure content meets AI-readability standards.
Technical SEO: Automated site fixes for agentic crawling, schema validation, and performance monitoring across large site portfolios.
Reporting and Insights: Generate automated dashboards combining traditional SEO metrics with AI citation data.
Utilizing AI Correctly
Enterprises must establish internal governance and alignment on AI use for SEO and content. This means:
Using AI for insights, creation, optimization, and scale automation.
Maintaining human oversight for strategy, quality control, and brand voice.
Balancing efficiency gains with authenticity. AI-generated content alone will not earn citations.
Building workflows that combine AI speed with human expertise and storytelling.
Enterprise SEO Focus For 2026
Google still dominates, so marketers should always have that as their primary focus: traditional search, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. At the same time, monitoring and optimizing for the growth of emerging AI discovery and answer-based engines will be essential in 2026.
Enterprise SEO professionals need to focus on:
Managing enterprise SEO with all marketing disciplines: site-to-brand teams.
Internal governance and alignment on AI use for SEO and content.
Utilizing AI correctly for insights, creation, optimization, and scale automation.
Ensuring your brand is cited and sourced as the authority, regardless of search or AI engine.
To succeed in 2026, SEO must evolve into influence optimization with a renewed laser focus on building authority through thought leadership and credible third-party signals.
We’re in the midst of a global mental-health crisis. More than a billion people worldwide suffer from a mental-health condition, according to the World Health Organization. The prevalence of anxiety and depression is growing in many demographics, particularly young people, and suicide is claiming hundreds of thousands of lives globally each year.
Given the clear demand for accessible and affordable mental-health services, it’s no wonder that people have looked to artificial intelligence for possible relief. Millions are already actively seeking therapy from popular chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, or from specialized psychology apps like Wysa and Woebot. On a broader scale, researchers are exploring AI’s potential to monitor and collect behavioral and biometric observations using wearables and smart devices, analyze vast volumes of clinical data for new insights, and assist human mental-health professionals to help prevent burnout.
But so far this largely uncontrolled experiment has produced mixed results. Many people have found solace in chatbots based on large language models (LLMs), and some experts see promise in them as therapists, but other users have been sent into delusional spirals by AI’s hallucinatory whims and breathless sycophancy. Most tragically, multiple families have alleged that chatbots contributed to the suicides of their loved ones, sparking lawsuits against companies responsible for these tools. In October, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed in a blog post that 0.15% of ChatGPT users “have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.” That’s roughly a million people sharing suicidal ideations with just one of these software systems every week.
The real-world consequences of AI therapy came to a head in unexpected ways in 2025 as we waded through a critical mass of stories about human-chatbot relationships, the flimsiness of guardrails on many LLMs, and the risks of sharing profoundly personal information with products made by corporations that have economic incentives to harvest and monetize such sensitive data.
Several authors anticipated this inflection point. Their timely books are a reminder that while the present feels like a blur of breakthroughs, scandals, and confusion, this disorienting time is rooted in deeper histories of care, technology, and trust.
LLMs have often been described as “black boxes” because nobody knows exactly how they produce their results. The inner workings that guide their outputs are opaque because their algorithms are so complex and their training data is so vast. In mental-health circles, people often describe the human brain as a “black box,” for analogous reasons. Psychology, psychiatry, and related fields must grapple with the impossibility of seeing clearly inside someone else’s head, let alone pinpointing the exact causes of their distress.
These two types of black boxes are now interacting with each other, creating unpredictable feedback loops that may further impede clarity about the origins of people’s mental-health struggles and the solutions that may be possible. Anxiety about these developments has much to do with the explosive recent advances in AI, but it also revives decades-old warnings from pioneers such as the MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, who argued against computerized therapy as early as the 1960s.
Dr. Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us— and How AI Could Save Lives Charlotte Blease
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2025
Charlotte Blease, a philosopher of medicine, makes the optimist’s case in Dr. Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us—and How AI Could Save Lives. Her book broadly explores the possible positive impacts of AI in a range of medical fields. While she remains clear-eyed about the risks, warning that readers who are expecting “a gushing love letter to technology” will be disappointed, she suggests that these models can help relieve patient suffering and medical burnout alike.
“Health systems are crumbling under patient pressure,” Blease writes. “Greater burdens on fewer doctors create the perfect petri dish for errors,” and “with palpable shortages of doctors and increasing waiting times for patients, many of us are profoundly frustrated.”
Blease believes that AI can not only ease medical professionals’ massive workloads but also relieve the tensions that have always existed between some patients and their caregivers. For example, people often don’t seek needed care because they are intimidated or fear judgment from medical professionals; this is especially true if they have mental-health challenges. AI could allow more people to share their concerns, she argues.
But she’s aware that these putative upsides need to be weighed against major drawbacks. For instance, AI therapists can provide inconsistent and even dangerous responses to human users, according to a 2025 study, and they also raise privacy concerns, given that AI companies are currently not bound by the same confidentiality and HIPAA standards as licensed therapists.
While Blease is an expert in this field, her motivation for writing the book is also personal: She has two siblings with an incurable form of muscular dystrophy, one of whom waited decades for a diagnosis. During the writing of her book, she also lost her partner to cancer and her father to dementia within a devastating six-month period. “I witnessed first-hand the sheer brilliance of doctors and the kindness of health professionals,” she writes. “But I also observed how things can go wrong with care.”
The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum Daniel Oberhaus
MIT PRESS, 2025
A similar tension animates Daniel Oberhaus’s engrossing book The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum. Oberhaus starts from a point of tragedy: the loss of his younger sister to suicide. As Oberhaus carried out the “distinctly twenty-first-century mourning process” of sifting through her digital remains, he wondered if technology could have eased the burden of the psychiatric problems that had plagued her since childhood.
“It seemed possible that all of this personal data might have held important clues that her mental health providers could have used to provide more effective treatment,” he writes. “What if algorithms running on my sister’s smartphone or laptop had used that data to understand when she was in distress? Could it have led to a timely intervention that saved her life? Would she have wanted that even if it did?”
This concept of digital phenotyping—in which a person’s digital behavior could be mined for clues about distress or illness—seems elegant in theory. But it may also become problematic if integrated into the field of psychiatric artificial intelligence (PAI), which extends well beyond chatbot therapy.
Oberhaus emphasizes that digital clues could actually exacerbate the existing challenges of modern psychiatry, a discipline that remains fundamentally uncertain about the underlying causes of mental illnesses and disorders. The advent of PAI, he says, is “the logical equivalent of grafting physics onto astrology.” In other words, the data generated by digital phenotyping is as precise as physical measurements of planetary positions, but it is then integrated into a broader framework—in this case, psychiatry—that, like astrology, is based on unreliable assumptions.
Oberhaus, who uses the phrase “swipe psychiatry” to describe the outsourcing of clinical decisions based on behavioral data to LLMs, thinks that this approach cannot escape the fundamental issues facing psychiatry. In fact, it could worsen the problem by causing the skills and judgment of human therapists to atrophy as they grow more dependent on AI systems.
He also uses the asylums of the past—in which institutionalized patients lost their right to freedom, privacy, dignity, and agency over their lives—as a touchstone for a more insidious digital captivity that may spring from PAI. LLM users are already sacrificing privacy by telling chatbots sensitive personal information that companies then mine and monetize, contributing to a new surveillance economy. Freedom and dignity are at stake when complex inner lives are transformed into data streams tailored for AI analysis.
AI therapists could flatten humanity into patterns of prediction, and so sacrifice the intimate, individualized care that is expected of traditional human therapists. “The logic of PAI leads to a future where we may all find ourselves patients in an algorithmic asylum administered by digital wardens,” Oberhaus writes. “In the algorithmic asylum there is no need for bars on the window or white padded rooms because there is no possibility of escape. The asylum is already everywhere—in your homes and offices, schools and hospitals, courtrooms and barracks. Wherever there’s an internet connection, the asylum is waiting.”
Chatbot Therapy: A Critical Analysis of AI Mental Health Treatment Eoin Fullam
ROUTLEDGE, 2025
Eoin Fullam, a researcher who studies the intersection of technology and mental health, echoes some of the same concerns in Chatbot Therapy: A Critical Analysis of AI Mental Health Treatment. A heady academic primer, the book analyzes the assumptions underlying the automated treatments offered by AI chatbots and the way capitalist incentives could corrupt these kinds of tools.
Fullam observes that the capitalist mentality behind new technologies “often leads to questionable, illegitimate, and illegal business practices in which the customers’ interests are secondary to strategies of market dominance.”
That doesn’t mean that therapy-bot makers “will inevitably conduct nefarious activities contrary to the users’ interests in the pursuit of market dominance,” Fullam writes.
But he notes that the success of AI therapy depends on the inseparable impulses to make money and to heal people. In this logic, exploitation and therapy feed each other: Every digital therapy session generates data, and that data fuels the system that profits as unpaid users seek care. The more effective the therapy seems, the more the cycle entrenches itself, making it harder to distinguish between care and commodification. “The more the users benefit from the app in terms of its therapeutic or any other mental health intervention,” he writes, “the more they undergo exploitation.”
This sense of an economic and psychological ouroboros—the snake that eats its own tail—serves as a central metaphor in Sike, the debut novel from Fred Lunzer, an author with a research background in AI.
Described as a “story of boy meets girl meets AI psychotherapist,” Sike follows Adrian, a young Londoner who makes a living ghostwriting rap lyrics, in his romance with Maquie, a business professional with a knack for spotting lucrative technologies in the beta phase.
Sike Fred Lunzer
CELADON BOOKS, 2025
The title refers to a splashy commercial AI therapist called Sike, uploaded into smart glasses, that Adrian uses to interrogate his myriad anxieties. “When I signed up to Sike, we set up my dashboard, a wide black panel like an airplane’s cockpit that showed my daily ‘vitals,’” Adrian narrates. “Sike can analyze the way you walk, the way you make eye contact, the stuff you talk about, the stuff you wear, how often you piss, shit, laugh, cry, kiss, lie, whine, and cough.”
In other words, Sike is the ultimate digital phenotyper, constantly and exhaustively analyzing everything in a user’s daily experiences. In a twist, Lunzer chooses to make Sike a luxury product, available only to subscribers who can foot the price tag of £2,000 per month.
Flush with cash from his contributions to a hit song, Adrian comes to rely on Sike as a trusted mediator between his inner and outer worlds. The novel explores the impacts of the app on the wellness of the well-off, following rich people who voluntarily commit themselves to a boutique version of the digital asylum described by Oberhaus.
The only real sense of danger in Sike involves a Japanese torture egg (don’t ask). The novel strangely sidesteps the broader dystopian ripples of its subject matter in favor of drunken conversations at fancy restaurants and elite dinner parties.
The sudden ascent of the AI therapist seems startlingly futuristic, as if it should be unfolding in some later time when the streets scrub themselves and we travel the world through pneumatic tubes.
Sike’s creator is simply “a great guy” in Adrian’s estimation, despite his techno-messianic vision of training the app to soothe the ills of entire nations. It always seems as if a shoe is meant to drop, but in the end, it never does, leaving the reader with a sense of non-resolution.
While Sike is set in the present day, something about the sudden ascent of the AI therapist—in real life as well as in fiction—seems startlingly futuristic, as if it should be unfolding in some later time when the streets scrub themselves and we travel the world through pneumatic tubes. But this convergence of mental health and artificial intelligence has been in the making for more than half a century. The beloved astronomer Carl Sagan, for example, once imagined a “network of computer psychotherapeutic terminals, something like arrays of large telephone booths” that could address the growing demand for mental-health services.
Oberhaus notes that one of the first incarnations of a trainable neural network, known as the Perceptron, was devised not by a mathematician but by a psychologist named Frank Rosenblatt, at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in 1958. The potential utility of AI in mental health was widely recognized by the 1960s, inspiring early computerized psychotherapists such as the DOCTOR script that ran on the ELIZA chatbot developed by Joseph Weizenbaum, who shows up in all three of the nonfiction books in this article.
Weizenbaum, who died in 2008, was profoundly concerned about the possibility of computerized therapy. “Computers can make psychiatric judgments,” he wrote in his 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason. “They can flip coins in much more sophisticated ways than can the most patient human being. The point is that they ought not to be given such tasks. They may even be able to arrive at ‘correct’ decisions in some cases—but always and necessarily on bases no human being should be willing to accept.”
It’s a caution worth keeping in mind. As AI therapists arrive at scale, we’re seeing them play out a familiar dynamic: Tools designed with superficially good intentions are enmeshed with systems that can exploit, surveil, and reshape human behavior. In a frenzied attempt to unlock new opportunities for patients in dire need of mental-health support, we may be locking other doors behind them.
I’ve been a professional search engine optimizer since 2005. Never have I experienced the speed and magnitude of the current web changes. Generative AI is accelerating and progressively dominating search results pages via AI Overviews and AI Mode. Many traditional optimization tactics are ineffective.
Here are my search engine predictions for 2026.
Zero Click Discovery
Consumers will increasingly discover and research products without clicking an organic listing. Commercial websites have experienced traffic declines for years. The trend will accelerate in 2026, as genAI platforms will research and recommend products based on shoppers’ prompts.
For instance, I queried ChatGPT with the prompt “best hiking boots for winter.” The platform ran its own searches, identified the best options, and then compared products across multiple criteria, including snow, insulation, warmth, and price.
For a prompt of “best hiking boots for winter,” ChatGPT ran its own searches, identified the best options, and then compared products.
The process could have taken me an hour or more searching, clicking, and then discovering each option. I would have read reviews and product comparisons. Instead, ChatGPT took less than a minute and required no additional clicks.
The next genAI evolution is enabling users to purchase products in the chat dialog, i.e, without leaving the platform. ChatGPT does this with “Instant Checkout“; Google’s version is “Agentic Checkout.”
All of this upends organic visibility for merchants, who face the double whammy of less traffic and few (if any) reliable attribution metrics for the traffic they do have.
Indeed, a top hurdle with optimizing for LLMs is the absence of data. We rely on third-party tools, which, in my experience, are unreliable. Google provides no AI Mode visibility data in Search Console, and ChatGPT offers analytics only to partners.
This could help SEO. Once they sell sponsorships and ads, LLM platforms will likely provide performance metrics, which could include organic visibility.
Optimization strategies will then become more informed and easier to plan.
AI Chats Replace Search
To date, consumers have not abandoned traditional search despite flocking to ChatGPT and similar platforms.
But the trend remains: More people are using genAI, especially for information gathering and instructions. Only technical help and writing assistance are trending down, per a September 2025 OpenAI report (PDF).
Google, too, is contributing by integrating AI Mode everywhere in search. AI Overviews now include invitations for searchers to converse in AI Mode rather than query further. Searchers can also access AI Mode from Google’s home page.
In AI Overviews, Google now invites searchers to converse in AI Mode rather than query further.
In short, I expect AI-powered search and LLM-driven answers to replace traditional search much faster. Changes in consumer behavior, declines in traffic, and new LLM visibility features will occur in 2026 as rapidly as 2025, if not more so.
Writing strong page titles is one of the simplest and most impactful SEO optimizations you can make. The title tag is often the first thing users see in search results, and it helps search engines understand the content of your page.
In this article, you’ll learn what SEO page titles are, why they matter, and how to write titles that improve visibility and attract clicks.
Key takeaways
Crafting a strong page title is vital for SEO; it attracts clicks and helps search engines understand your content
An SEO page title appears in search results and browser tabs, serving as the first impression for users
To optimize your page title, include relevant keywords and ensure it aligns with the content to improve your ranking
Yoast SEO provides tools to help check title width and keyword usage, and includes an AI-powered title generator
You can change the page title after publication, and doing so may significantly improve click-through rates
Table of contents
What is an SEO page title?
Let’s start with the basics. If you look at the source of a page (right-click on the page, then choose View Page Source), you find a title in the head section. It looks like this:
This is an example SEO title - Example.com
This is the HTML title tag, also called the SEO title. When you look something up in a search engine, you get a list of results that appear as snippets. The part that looks like a headline is the SEO title. The SEO title typically includes the post title but may also incorporate other elements, such as the site name. Or even emojis!
An example of a Google snippet with a favicon, site name, URL, meta description, and title in the largest font
In most cases, the SEO title is the first thing people see, even before they get on your site. In tabbed browsers, you will usually also see the SEO title in the page tab, as shown in the image below.
An SEO title in a browser tab
What’s the purpose of an SEO title?
Your SEO title aims to entice people to click on it, visit your website, read your post, or purchase your product. If your title is not good enough, people will ignore it and move on to other results. Essentially, there are two goals that you want to achieve with an SEO title:
It must help you rank for a keyword
It must make the user want to click through to your page
Google uses many signals when deciding your relevance for a specific keyword. While click-through rate is not a direct ranking factor, user interaction with search results can be a signal that a result matches search intent.
If your page ranks well but attracts few clicks, that may indicate your title doesn’t resonate with searchers. Improving your SEO title can increase clicks and help you perform better over time.
Additionally, as mentioned earlier, Google uses the SEO title specified for your website as a ranking input. So, it’s not just about those clicks; you also need to ensure that your title reflects the topic being discussed on your page and the keyword that you’re focusing on. The SEO title you use has a direct influence on your ranking.
Now that you know the importance of SEO titles, let’s look at how to evaluate and improve them. Tools like Yoast SEO (Free) can help by checking key elements such as title width and keyword usage. Yoast SEO Premium uses generative AI to create titles.
A smarter analysis in Yoast SEO Premium
Yoast SEO Premium has a smart content analysis that helps you take your content to the next level!
Yoast SEO Premium includes an AI-powered title generator that can help you create SEO-friendly page titles based on your content and focus keyphrase. This can be useful for inspiration or for quickly generating alternatives when you’re unsure how to phrase a title.
As with any AI-generated content, it’s best to review and refine the suggested titles to ensure they align with your page’s intent, brand voice, and audience expectations.
Simply hit the Use AI button to have Yoast SEO Premium generate great titles for you
What does the empty title check in Yoast SEO do?
The empty title check in Yoast SEO Premium is self-explanatory: it checks whether you’ve filled in any text in your post’s ‘Title’ section. If you haven’t, you’ll see a red traffic light reminding you to add a title. Once this is filled in, the post title can be automatically added to the SEO title field using the ‘Title’ variable.
You can edit your titles in the Search appearance section of Yoast SEO
Note that your post title is output as an H1 heading. A clear H1 helps users quickly understand what a page is about, improves accessibility for screen readers, and aids search engines in interpreting the page structure. You should only use one H1 heading per page to avoid confusing search engines. Don’t worry; we’ve got a check for multiple H1 headings in Yoast SEO!
What does the SEO title width check in Yoast SEO do?
You will find this check in the SEO tab of the Yoast SEO sidebar or meta box. If you haven’t written an SEO title yet, this will remind you to do so. Additionally, Yoast SEO verifies the width of your SEO title. When it is too long, you will get a warning.
We used to warn you if your SEO title was too short, but we’ve changed that since our Yoast 17.1 release. A title with an optimal width gets you a green traffic light in the analysis. Remember that we exclude the separator symbol and site title from the title width check. We don’t consider these when calculating the SEO title progress bar.
You can find the SEO title width check in the Yoast SEO sidebar or the meta box
How to write an SEO title with an optimal width
If your SEO title doesn’t have the correct width, parts of it may be cut off in Google’s search results. The result may vary, depending on the device you’re using. That’s why you can also check how your SEO title will look in the mobile and desktop search results in the Search appearance section of Yoast SEO. The tool defaults to the mobile version, but you can also switch to view it in the desktop version.
Here’s a desktop result:
The Search appearance in Yoast SEO lets you switch between the mobile and desktop results
And here’s the mobile result for the same URL:
A mobile preview for this particular page
As a general guideline, aim for a title that fully displays on mobile search results, clearly communicates the main topic, and avoids unnecessary filler words. If your title fits visually and still reads naturally, you’re on the right track.
Width vs. Length
Have you noticed that we talk about width rather than length? Why is that? Rather than using a character count, Google has a fixed width for the titles counted in pixels. While your title tags can be long, and Google doesn’t have a set limit on the number of characters you can use, there is a limit on what’s visible in the search results. If your SEO title is too wide, Google will visually truncate it. That might be different from what you want. Additionally, avoid wasting valuable space by keeping the title concise and clear. Additionally, the SEO title often informs other title-like elements, such as the og:title, which also has display constraints.
Luckily, our Search appearance section can help you out! You can fill in your SEO title; our plugin will provide you with immediate feedback. The green line underneath the SEO title turns red when your title is too long. Keep an eye on that and use the feedback to create great headlines.
The Search appearance section in the Yoast SEO for WordPress block editor
The Google preview in Yoast SEO for Shopify
What does the keyphrase in the SEO title check in Yoast SEO do?
This check appears in the SEO tab of the Yoast SEO sidebar in WordPress and Shopify, as well as in the meta box in WordPress. It checks if you’re using your keyphrase in the SEO title of your post or page. This check is intentionally strict because the SEO title plays an important role in signaling a page’s topic to both search engines and users. Since Google uses the title to figure out your page’s topic, not having the focus keyphrase in the SEO title may harm your rankings. Additionally, potential visitors are more likely to click on a search result that matches their query. For optimal results, try to include your keyphrase at the beginning of the SEO title.
This check finds out if you’ve used your focus keyphrase in your SEO title
How to use your keyphrase in the SEO title
Sometimes, when optimizing for a highly competitive keyword, everyone will have the keyword at the beginning of the SEO title. In that case, you can try making it stand out by putting one or two words before your focus keyword, thereby slightly “indenting” your result. In Yoast SEO, if you start your SEO title with “the”, “a”, “who”, or another function word followed by your keyphrase, you’ll still get a green traffic light.
At other times, such as when you have a very long keyphrase, adding the complete keyphrase at the beginning doesn’t make sense. If your SEO title looks weird with the keyphrase at the beginning, try to add as much of the keyphrase as early in the SEO title as possible. But always keep an eye on the natural flow and readability.
How to reduce the chance of Google rewriting your SEO title
Google may rewrite titles when they are overly long, stuffed with keywords, misleading, or inconsistent with the page’s main heading.
To reduce the likelihood of rewrites:
Make sure your SEO title closely matches your page’s H1
Avoid excessive separators, repetition, or boilerplate text
Ensure the title accurately reflects the page content
While rewrites can still happen, clear and concise titles are more likely to be shown as written.
Want to learn how to write text that’s pleasant to read and optimized for search engines? Our SEO copywriting course can help you with that. You can access this course and our other SEO courses with Yoast SEO Premium. This also gives you access to extra features in the Yoast SEO plugin.
Are you struggling with more aspects of SEO copywriting? Don’t worry! We can teach you to master all facets, so you’ll know how to write awesome copy that ranks. Take a look at our SEO copywriting training and try the free trial lessons!
The post title, also known as the H1 heading, is the main heading users see on the page. Its primary role is to help readers understand what the page is about and to add structure to your content. You should always write your H1 with users in mind.
The SEO title is the title that appears in search results and in the browser tab. This title helps search engines understand the topic of your page and influences whether users click on your result.
While the SEO title and H1 can be similar, they do not need to be identical. In WordPress, tools like Yoast SEO allow you to set a separate SEO title, giving you more control over how your page appears in search results without changing the on-page heading.
Should you add your brand to the SEO title?
For quite some time, it was a common practice among some SEOs to omit the site name from the SEO title. The idea was that the “density” of the title mattered, and the site name wouldn’t help with that. Don’t do this. If possible, your SEO title should include your brand, preferably in a recognizable way. If people search for a topic and see your brand several times, even if they don’t click on it the first time, they might click when they see you again on their next page of results.
However, with the site name and favicon updates, be sure to fill in the site settings, upload a favicon, and make general changes to the design of the snippets. This will increase your brand’s visibility in search results. Today, you’ll notice that Google hardly shows your brand name in the snippet’s title. However, Google often has a mind of its own when generating titles to change them for any given reason. The design and function of the SERPs can change at any moment, so we still recommend adding your brand to your titles.
Can you change the SEO title after a page is published?
Yes. You can change the SEO title even after a page has been published, and doing so can improve performance.
At Yoast, we once noticed that although we ranked well for “WordPress security,” the page was not getting as much traffic as expected. We updated the SEO title and meta description to make them more engaging and relevant. As a result, traffic to that page increased by over 30 percent.
The original SEO title was:
WordPress Security • Yoast
We changed it to:
WordPress Security in a few easy steps! • Yoast
This change did not significantly affect rankings, but it did improve click-through rates. The keywords stayed largely the same, but the title became more compelling for searchers.
This shows that optimizing SEO titles after publication can be an effective way to increase traffic, especially if your page already ranks well but receives fewer clicks than expected.
Does Google always use the SEO title you set?
No. Google does not always display the exact SEO title you set in search results.
That said, the HTML title tag is still the most common source Google uses for generating title links. Google Search uses the following sources to automatically determine title links:
Google typically selects one title per page and does not change it for different queries.
What does this mean for you? The SEO title you set remains important for ranking and relevance. Even if Google sometimes displays a different version, your title still helps search engines understand the content of your page.
To stay on top of changes, monitor your key pages in Google Search Console, check how titles appear in search results, and watch for shifts in click-through rates.
Can you use the same title for SEO and social media?
You can, but it is often better not to.
What might be a good SEO title isn’t necessarily a good title for social media. In social media, keyword optimization is less important than creating a title that entices people to click. You often don’t need to include the brand name in the title. This is especially true for Facebook and X if you include some branding in your post image. Our social media appearance previews in Yoast SEO Premium and Yoast SEO for Shopify can help you.
If you use Yoast SEO, you can set different titles for Google, Facebook, and X. Enter your SEO title in the snippet editor, then customize the social media titles in the social tab. If you do not set a specific X title, X will use the Facebook title by default.
This flexibility allows you to optimize your titles for both search engines and social platforms without compromise.
Ahad Qureshi
I’m a Computer Science grad who accidentally stumbled into writing—and stayed because I fell in love with it. Over the past six years, I’ve been deep in the world of SEO and tech content, turning jargon into stories that actually make sense. When I’m not writing, you’ll probably find me lifting weights to balance my love for food (because yes, gym and biryani can coexist) or catching up with friends over a good cup of chai.
