SEO Archives - Chief Marketer

CMO Strategy, AI & Brand: Top Stories of 2025

Following were the most engaging Chief Marketer stories of 2025 — from a case study in higher education marketing to a creator network launch from Lowe’s to a McKinsey growth study examining the CMO-CEO disconnect.

Shopper/Retail

Woof Gang Reaps Local Marketing Benefits With National Resources

Woof Gang CEO Ricardo Azevedo shares how passionate store owners plus the web traffic of a national brand helps keep the pet groomer and retail store growing.

AI

Forrester Report Clarifies Differences in AEO and SEO Practices

Businesses that have long relied on SEO to reap leads and sales are now hustling to optimize their websites for answer engines. But AEO is not radically different from SEO, says Nikhil Lai, Principal Analyst, Performance Marketing at Forrester. In its report “Zero-Click Goes Shopping,” Forrester recommends how businesses should approach some of those key differences regarding bot access and content.

Social

Marketers Are Looking Beyond Top-of-Funnel When Gauging Social Media Effectiveness

Engagement continues to be the most common metric for determining success on social media, according to Sprout Social’s 2025 Impact of Social Media Marketing report. But more and more marketers want to see the direct business impact.

AI

What Google’s AI Mode Means for Search Traffic and Brands

Google launched “AI Mode,” a chatbot-style interface embedded into its apps, at its annual developers conference this week. The new feature stands to alter the search landscape even further, requiring brands to shift from optimizing for search to optimizing for audiences.

AI

How to Optimize Early-Stage LLM Search for B2B SEO

As search evolves with the growing adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs), businesses must adapt their SEO strategies. Here are key insights into how B2B brands can optimize their content to appear in AI-generated results.

Technology

Topic Authority Rules SEO—Here’s How You Build It

How to think about topic authority in SEO, the most important rankings factor of 2024.

Data & Analytics

How to Avoid Google Penalizing AI-Generated Marketing Content

How to avoid the common pitfalls of poor content, and crucially, AI’s potential to amplify it.

Technology

Google, GenAI and Search: How Marketers Can Prepare for the Changing SEO Landscape

How genAI is transforming the way we search, strategies that organizations can use to create LLM-friendly content and insights on how genAI will continue to transform the marketing landscape.

Technology

How to Boost SEO Performance With UGC

The benefits and uses for user-generated content to improve a brand’s SEO.