Will Blears

Link building doesn’t work anymore! That’s what I see so many "SEO's" say... "Can you believe your agency buys links" "How to know if your agency is buying links" "Can you still believe SEO's still pay for links" Half of these people, haven't ranked anything... Just saying. Most have corporate SEO roles with massive brands that carry a ton of authority already. But for the average business, acquiring link DOES still work. Better than ever. This page was stuck. Buried. We built one high-quality, relevant niche edit at the end of May. 📈 It jumped to Page 2. One link. Not 100. Not some fancy AI hack. Just relevance, quality, and strategy. 🚫 Don’t waste money on poor links. 💡 Use that cash to barter for real links in your space. The ones that make Google pay attention. Links still work. If your page isn’t moving, maybe you don’t have a content problem. Maybe you just have a no-authority problem.

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The -£15K Google Ads tick box A cautionary tale for anyone who believes Google Ads reps are doing the right thing. The company contacted me aftering noticing a steep decline in sales from their website, even though they were spending the same on Google Ads. I looked at their account and saw that the 'Include Google Display Network' option had been ticked. In English that means: let Google spread your ads everywhere and deliver mostly crap clicks that achieve you nothing. Turns out it was a Google Ads rep who had been in their account and had made that change, which cost them -£15K revenue that they typically would have had during those weeks. After changing it to what it should be the client commented: "it was like someone flicked the light switch off for awhile and then when it came back on, the sales came flooding through". Please people: be extremely cautious when dealing with Google reps - some are ok but in my experience the majority make things worse.

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The fundamental optimisations required to actually appear in Generative AI Platforms for relevant queries remain very similar to traditional SEO tactics (if you were already doing SEO correctly). However, whilst the tactics remain pretty much the same, these platforms and products have changed the search landscape in one major way. When it comes to informational intent queries – users are less likely to visit your website from a Generative AI Platform like ChatGPT or one of Google’s LLM driven AI features like AI Overviews. Essentially, the growth of these platforms and features is leading to an increase in “zero click searches” i.e. searches for which users never click through to a website. When it comes to Google’s own AI features, in the year after the introduction of AI Overviews, the number of impressions on Google increased 49% but the click-through rate fell 30% (according to a BrightEdge study) . In another Ahrefs analysis across 300,000 searches, top organic results lost 34.5% of their clicks when an AI answer was present. I have run multiple reviews of websites that have seen a drop in CTR since the introduction of AI Overviews, and have observed that AI Overviews are mainly reducing click-through rates for a certain subset of informational-intent queries that I call “immediate response” intent content. In other words, situations where users ask Google a specific, typically low-stakes, question for which they just want a quick answer. The hallmark of “immediate response” intent queries is that the users don’t really care that much about the source of the content and they have no intention of reading a comprehensive guide etc. As for standalone Generative AI platforms, whilst things were looking quite positive in terms of click through to websites, we’ve seen a significant reversal in this trend recently with one study showing that ChatGPT referral traffic dropped by 52% in August 2025 vs July 2025. This teaches us a valuable lesson – these platforms are constantly evolving and we cannot take for granted that any trends will persist in the long term. In fact SEO expert, Malte Landwehr, recently shared data that suggests that zero click searches are even more prevalent on ChatGPT and other AI platforms / features than on Google search. So whilst the tactics are familiar, the age of AI answers does require a fundamental shift when it comes to SEO at a strategic level. I'll discuss that in more detail in my next post. #geo #zeroclicksearch #seo

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Is paying a 0% commission rate to publishers really a thing now?!?! Hearing this more often recently and shocked people expect free marketing from affiliates. What is the point of this strategy? Having a 0% commission rate set will still show the publisher how much revenue they drove and then they will be able to figure out how much in commissions they are losing. Publishers will then end up demoting you on their site and likely not want to work with you. 0% commission is not a strategy and it's very insulting to publishers who were willing to put in the hard work on a performance basis.

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🚨 Big news. New ways to do POAS bidding in Meta with ProfitMetrics Meta is doubling down on optimizing for values that truly matter to your business. This is an exciting step forward for all marketers. For the past four years, we’ve enabled our customers to bid for profit in Meta, but it wasn’t native. Marketers had to choose between Revenue or Profit as the purchase event value. That’s about to change, making it much easier to optimize for either profit or revenue and shift between them seamlessly. We’ve been running a beta together with Meta, testing profit value vs. revenue value for a few clients and the early results are showing strong incremental increase in profit after ad spend 📈. This functionality is already built into the new Conversion Booster for Meta, which we’re launching in beta soon. Another important release from Meta: the ability to do value-bidding on non-purchase events. For e-commerce, this means you can now optimize for custom event values. For example, in Conversion Booster Meta you’ll be able to: ✅ Bid for new customer profit or new customer revenue ✅ Bid for existing customer profit or existing customer revenue I’m looking forward to sharing our beta results and launching the Conversion Booster for Meta, enabling bidding for values that truly matter to your business, while giving the algorithm the right signals to work toward your real objectives. 👍 Follow me here for more insights on tracking, value-based bidding, attribution, POAS®, and customer lifetime value strategies.

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👀 A few things we went through in last week’s Google Ads Level Up live session – and worth knowing if you’re managing PPC campaigns right now: 🎯 A new 'Super Seasonality Adjustments'-type feature should be coming soon… Details are under wraps for now 🤫 – but it’s one to watch as we head into that time of year. (I reckon we’ve got about one more week before the “have you started planning for peak season yet?” deluge begins…) 🎧 New podcast from Ginny Marvin: Google Ads Decoded Great to see this. The first episode covers some very current topics – including AI Max and the new PMax channel reports. 🔍 Broad vs Exact A recent study from Boris Beceric ✅ puts the two match types side by side and gives a useful look at how they're each performing now. The results support the approach we take in Level Up: for all the arguments about broad’s additional signals and smarter matching, it’s still a quality-vs-quantity question at its root – and exact match remains the backbone for control. 📊 https://lnkd.in/eWTqt4_H 🛠️ Enhanced Conversions – setup walkthrough If you’ve been meaning to check your Enhanced Conversions setup (or finally get it in place), this walkthrough – posted by Adriaan Dekker – is the clearest I’ve seen. 📄 https://lnkd.in/eTBgAf7T 🍌 Nano Banana – Google’s new AI image editor A slick new tool for manipulating images with natural language prompts. Not groundbreaking given some of the other AI tools now at our disposal – but if we weren’t so spoiled by the pace of change, it would be pretty crazy to be given get this kind of image editing power with zero training. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e8gp2VJN I share updates like this weekly inside the membership – along with live sessions, training modules, and more... 👉 https://lnkd.in/ewQUZBmg

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In what was originally supposed to be a short video (25 minutes later), this covers thoughts and priority areas for ecommerce SEO in 2026. Including: - Thoughts on content types and how to prioritise effectively - On-site navigation, using internal search data & internal link strategy - Passive link acquisition, digital PR and real blogger outreach - AI considerations such as top LLM referral sources and content structures And a load more. Link is in the comments!

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Some super bright people in the SEO/ GEO space you MUST listen to. Mordy Oberstein: Mordy is at the centre of the brand communications part of GEO. This is your core, and if you get this wrong, nothing will stick in generative engines. Dan Hinckley Dan and his team conduct data-driven tests to see what's actually happening. Chris Long Chris was way ahead of the GEO curve before others were even discussing it, and had actually been generating leads and sales through generative engines for ages. Steve Toth Steve is absolutely another leader who not only figured out GEO and why it was different, but was among the first to declare an approach and is leading the pack with his knowledge. In my opinion, he gives way too much away for free, but I ain't complaining and neither should you. And of course me. I was among the first SEOs to publicly tell you to focus on brand mentions and share of search. Today, we are the team that can stand in front of your CEO and CFO and explain the science behind GEO, what it is, what it does and why it works. Or as Mordy said to me today, we "optimise sites and amplify a brand's message." Which I loved. Now, I don't always agree with the above people, but I listen to EVERYTHING they say and watch what they do. Because they say incredibly insightful things about brands and generative engines. Now, there are others, and many in the PR space are doing the same from their end (a topic for another day). However, you must absolutely follow and read what the above are saying. Even if you disagree with them/ me, keep reading and challenging your own views. Because this "SEO is just GEO thing", is not the reality of the situation. It's not what you call it that matters...it's what you do to achieve the increase in visibility that's important.

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When I spoke at brightonSEO, I called out the SEO bros on YouTube pushing ChatGPT automations to pump out content at scale. Predictably, when the Helpful Content update hit, they very much got found out. Now those same voices are shouting about GEO/AEO etc etc. And once again, they're talking with authority about something they barely understand. Obviously search is changing. AI search and evolving engines are always worth thinking about. I don't even really mind GEO as a term, when people aren't being overly sensational with it. But if someone’s telling you to rip up your digital strategy and jump on a shiny new thing, run a mile. For now, and for most businesses, I’m confident that solid fundamentals still hold up. Serve the user. Be people first. Use common sense. And definitely don't take your SEO advice from clickbait YouTube videos with thumbnails like this 😱

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Excited to announce I'll be leading a full-day masterclass on Technical SEO in 2026 at HiveMCR in Manchester on Thursday, May 21st, 2026! With the SEO landscape evolving faster than ever, think AI-driven discovery, selective indexing, and generative engines, plus core SEO basics that are still critical. The agenda is still a bit in flux to incorporate the latest shifts. That said, we'll dive deep from essentials to advanced strategies, covering topics like: - Google as the Discovery Engine in 2026 - Managing crawl and render budgets for efficiency - Architecting sites for visibility with JS, AI, and indexability audits - Building knowledge graphs via schema, entities, and E-E-A-T - Optimizing performance with Core Web Vitals 2.0, CDNs, and more - Tackling unified search across GEO, international, and local frontiers Whether you're an SEO pro, developer, or digital lead, this hands-on session will equip you with the technical foundations for thriving in tomorrow's search world. It's part of the epic HiveMCR conference (May 21-22), blending top-tier insights with festival vibes—talks, panels, comedy, music, and networking! I missed out last year, so grateful to be invited this year by Charlie Whitworth (The Authentic SEO 🐝)

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Check out our case study below to see how Jacob Fallon and Eleanor Hayward Mitchell combined SEO and CRO to deliver amazing results for their client, Sagacity! By aligning technical optimisation with conversion strategies, we achieved significant improvements in keyword rankings and qualified traffic. With the end result one all clients are after... increased conversions. 🚀 This is a great example of how collaborating with a client over several years and becoming a trusted digital partner enables us to build a robust, data-driven approach that delivers long-term value. #digitalgrowth #SEO #CRO

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It shocks me that I still see potential clients coming to us with Universal Analytics tags in their Google Tag Manager account. Google has been pushing the importance of page load speed for AGES - unnecessary or bloated tags in GTM can have a significant impact on your page load times. Everything should have been moved across to GA4 years ago. Clean up your tags people!

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Performance Max keeping your ROAS "stable" is probably costing you a lot of money. Once you max out your search and shopping placements (where the quality traffic lives), Performance Max shifts your additional spend to display and video inventory. Display & video traffic averages down the CPCs and CPMs across all channels. Without these, you can't identify the signs of overspending. You used to get clear indicators that you were paying too much for the same traffic. For example, if you were overspending on search and shopping, you could see your CPCs increase, spend increase, and revenue stay the same. Now, Performance Max mixes auction metrics from Display & Video, and you don't get the same insights when you saturate search & Shopping (increased CPCs with no additional revenue). And the more you spend, the more serious the problem. I've seen many PMAX campaigns with over 50% of their spend in Display & Video traffic. The solution is an unfortunate necessity: You likely need to completely abandon PMAX and run your channels separately to regain visibility into where your money's actually going. Performance Max is designed to maximize ad inventory utilization, not your returns. Google doesn't want you to see exactly what quality of traffic you're buying. This is the entire point.

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So the latest lead gen gossip is that 2 partners of the leading Lead Gen Agency ColdIQ left to start a direct competitor. 🚩🚩🚩 I've seen the same issue over and over again 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁 They will just go and start their own agency. Why does this happen? Agencies are • One of the easiest businesses to start (no overhead, all services) • Your key employees will realize you're doing labor arbitrage (paying them $5k/month, but billing the client $10K) • Eventually after they have learned all of your processes, they will just copy and paste them and start their own This is actually one of the reasons I've resisted from starting my own lead gen agency and instead stayed fractional. Dealing with both client churn AND employee churn is mega stressful To retain top talent long term, you need to offer the right incentives, which are often either equity or revenue share. I think another solution is to just ensure all of your employees only do one specific task, so you have replaceable cogs in a machine. So the secret sauce of your business model is knowing how the entire machine works. Thoughts? Have you seen this pattern before, or is it just me? #leadgeneration  #agency #employees

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Everyone thinks affiliate marketing is easy. Throw up a website. Buy some traffic. Watch the sales roll in. Rubbish! That’s the biggest myth in the game, and one that keeps too many people stuck in short-term thinking. The best affiliates aren’t just traffic buyers. They’re 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀. They create genuine value for the player. They build relationships. They own the audience and can send them to multiple offers over time. If all you’re doing is pushing clicks from a banner straight to an offer, you’re not building IP. You’re not building trust. And you’re not building a sustainable business. This week on the Affiliate Marketing Podcast, I sat down with Moshe Adir, founder of Vegas Kings, to unpack why this myth is so dangerous, and what actually separates top affiliates from the rest. He also dropped in some value bombs about how he’s built successful partnerships in a cut-throat industry, so listen up and make sure you subscribe for more as I interview some of the industry leaders about their tips for building partnerships that LAST! Tune in to hear the full conversation and start thinking like a brand builder, not just a traffic driver 👇

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