Alli Wolf

My colleagues Renee Consorte and Lisa Stone are working on an article about when account-based marketing personalization or targeting crosses the line. Whether it's just creepy or downright unethical, we know there is a continuum of offenses. If you can share screenshots with examples of bad actors taking things too far (please black out any identifying information about individuals), we'd love to include them in the article.

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Big news today from SEO giant SEMRush and Adobe. This year, we have seen marketing technology brands (broadly) shifting from a particular focus on a specialty area (like SEMRush on SEO) to "one stop shops" that offer a suite of technology services. Meta and Google are making similar moves, integrating the ability to do creative development in platform and automating ongoing campaign optimization, both fueled by AI and machine learning. One of the most critical (and often, overlooked) things marketers (and certainly your agency partner) must do is stay on top of these trends. Are they changing the fundamentals of campaign strategy? How are they affecting data integrity, or the quality of the outputs these tools are used for? For advertising platforms, how are new tactics impacting lead quality? Cost per action and ROI? It's the wild west out there. Things are moving fast--particularly anything related to SEO and generative engine optimization. Curious: How are you or your teams grappling with the pace of change? https://lnkd.in/gGEr8c5N

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I get a little nervy seeing Performance CTV platforms targeting the SMB space and claiming it'll be the Meta of TV. It's not as straightforward as that. You can't measure CTV on in-platform metrics or rely on Google Analytics style lift and claim ROAS this way. It doesnt work long term. And I suspect the churn rate of customers in these platforms would validate that. Measurement should be viewed as part of a robust, incremental driven approach. Understand the real levers and determine what budget is required to move the business outcome needle. I know it's a great rhetoric for investors (the Meta of TV) but when I think of SMBs investing their budget into a channel thats incredibly nuanced (vs one app like Facebook, IG, Tiktok) and expect it to perform on a par with User Acquisitions (UA) metrics, its really setting up for long term failure. If I were to be really cynical, it's a treadmill business model. Acquire new SMBs to test CTV channel. Measure it incorrectly. Realise they had the wrong strategy. Churn and they go back to the comfort of Search and Social. Rinse, repeat. With over 200,000 brands to go get, there's plenty of runway on this treadmill. Just not sure it's a sustainable strategy long term.

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If you're charging your SEO clients $3-5K/month, this post is for you. I have done a ton of service work over the years. A few highlights so you know I'm not full of shit: - I started my career in marketing by freelancing. First invoice I ever sent was for $99. I actually rounded my hourly rate down to get the invoice under the $100 budget that the client agreed to. - I have since invoiced at $1,000/hour, but I don't even look at my hourly rates anymore. - While working an executive role at a startup, I was also earning six figures in consulting income on the side. - I've had multiple stints when 100% of my income for the year was consulting income. If I was to go back to the stage where the bulk of my income was from $3-5K monthly retainers, here's what I'd do: 1) Above all else, get the retainers higher. This is the single most important thing any freelancer can do to improve their quality of life. Not only do you get more money, your stress goes DOWN. Higher-paying clients (on average) are also more chill. Less bullshit, less nonsense, more focus on just getting the work done. The higher up the chain you go, the more likely everyone is a professional. There is a point where this breaks and you're stuck in RFP corporate hell but you have a long way to go before that's a problem. Does more money with less client stress sound like a good thing? Fuck yeah it does. Get the retainers up. 2) Be open to going in-house for a period, especially for a major/hot brand. Even 2 years at the right company can catapult your freelancing income to a level you'd never expect. Anyone currently working at OpenAI or Anthropic will be on the gravy train for the next decade, even if they're completely incompetent. You don't even need a top-tier startup. I joined a hot-enough startup at the time (KISSmetrics) which imploded. It was still enough to jump start my career in all sorts of crazy ways. 3) Move up the value stack with your work. If all you do is turn Ahrefs site audits into PDFs for a "site audit package," you're gonna get stuck. Move your work to higher stakes stuff that's closer to driving revenue for a company. And move your work up the org chart as much as you can. If your projects are managed by a SEO Manager, you're stuck at their budget (basically nothing). If your projects are managed by the CEO, the ceiling gets a LOT higher.

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Most brands think discovery starts on their website. But the data often tells a different story. In a search ecosystem analysis I ran years ago, most commercial traffic didn’t go directly to brand websites. It flowed through third-party list pages and review platforms. Think: • Capterra • comparison blogs • editorial “best software” lists These pages sit between the user and the brand. They influence: Which products get discovered Which brands look credible Which solutions users even consider In many categories, those pages capture more discovery traffic than brand sites themselves. Fast forward to AI search. Those same sources now influence AI answers and citations. Understanding your category ecosystem isn’t just an SEO exercise anymore. It’s about understanding who shapes the narrative around your brand. Curious if others are seeing the same shift in their space.

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#GoogleSearch #pageviews fell 34% year over year. #GoogleDiscover dropped 15%. #ChatGPT referrals rose 200% but still account for less than 1% of total traffic. #Traffic is shifting, not disappearing. Total weekly pageviews across publishers fell just 6% from 2024 to 2025, a typical swing tied partly to the news cycle. Search is shrinking as a share of traffic, while direct, internal, and messaging channels are growing. https://lnkd.in/g5u7yEYj #seo

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WordStream by LocaliQ put together a nice list of findings from a recent survey they did. The one that stood out to me the most? #5: Accounts with at least one negative keyword saw 3x higher conversion rates. I know this should go without saying, but please, if you're running a paid search campaign, make sure you're utilizing a negative keyword list. That is an easy step you can control that will easily improve your campaigns (as noted by the 3x higher converstion rates). Check out their link below for more gold. https://lnkd.in/gKFUb4TM

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"SEO is dead." I hear it every day and see the posts all nodding in agreement. But while everyone is busy eulogizing search, my inbox is telling a different story. This month hasn't just been good, it’s been one of Ardent Creative Inc's best lead-gen months in years. The secret? We stopped assuming we were "safe." For 10 years, we were untouchable. We sat at the top of Page 1 like we owned the spot. We didn’t even monitor our position. Why would we? The leads were consistent. Then, the algorithm changed. Well, we know it is always changing... We slid from Page 1 to Page 4. The silence was deafening. Our lead flow dried up, replaced by low-quality spam from social media. Yeah, you read that right. Here is the reality people miss: SEO isn't dead. It just stopped rewarding the lazy. We had to fight back. We made adjustments, clawed back to Page 1, slipped again, and adjusted again. It’s no longer a "set it and forget it" game, it’s a tactical battle. If you think SEO is dead, it’s probably because you stopped fighting for your spot. Aside from referrals, search remains our #1 ROI. Don't let the "SEO is dead" crowd distract you while they quietly take your keywords. I may not have to say it but we are great at what we do for clients and sometimes, ourselves. LOL.

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