Welcome back to another roundup of the top news in digital marketing. In addition to some big stories, this month’s roundup features insightful work from some of the speakers headlining CMSEO 2025. Check out their work here and their presentations at the upcoming conference!
First, you’ll learn what’s possible by scaling AI. You’ll also learn how to adapt when Google tries to kill your traffic, and what an insider says about using Google Sheets for more effective SEO.
There’s plenty more after that. You’ll learn how one site owner built (and hosted) four websites with one AI prompt, the latest techniques to master on-page SEO, and how to force more engagement with YouTube audiences.
In the final set of unmissable stories, you’ll learn how to combine the power of AI and social media, and find out if your current plan is ready for AI search. Let’s jump in!
AI Strategy & Scale in SEO: A Real-World Success Story with Tom Winter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM2Mm95LGa4
In this video hosted by Anatolii Ulitovskyi, CMSEO speaker Tom Winters helps you understand what it takes to scale AI strategies. As he mentions, he works to create AI solutions for content research, and he uses this video to reveal some of the most important things he’s learned.
The topic at hand is the real-life example of a furniture brand called Kouboo that embraced AISEO. In a focused 7-day test, Kouboo achieved an impressive 53% visibility in ChatGPT and Perplexity results for high-intent prompts, ranking #1 among all competing brands.
Anatolii and Tom examine how this rapid rise in AI-driven visibility happened and what role programs like ChatGPT are likely to play as these strategies become more widespread.
Tom applies his experience to answer many of the biggest AI scale questions, including what these strategies look like, how brands can optimize their existing content assets for the changes, and what kind of visibility matters most in a zero-click world.
Furthermore, he explains how AI-driven strategies can maintain professionalism and credibility through practices like quality gates, better freelancer hiring, and more. Check out the packed discussion to learn more. Next, find out how to secure your traffic when Google is the threat.
Google Will Kill Your Traffic – Here’s How You Adapt | Kevin Indig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQXvbeYF5go
CMSEO speaker Tom Soulo hosts this episode of the Ahrefs Podcast and speaks with Kevin Indig about the real impact of AI on search behavior, website traffic, and SEO strategy.
Ahead of the discussion, Kevin analyzed over 5 billion search visits and found that while people perform searches more often, they spend less time per session, and often don’t click anything. Together, Tom and Kevin break down what’s happening and what you need to know.
First, they summarize what’s changed. Kevin predicts that 2024 may be the peak year for traffic overall and that it will decline for a long time due to AI overviews and other reasons that Google has no motivation to return clicks. They both seem to agree that a low-click future is coming.
AI overviews as a specific obstacle to clicks are a big part of the discussion. Tom and Kevin discuss how these overviews have changed, and where they are going as the number of terms that display AIOs has grown with every update.
That’s just the start of this ranging discussion. Keep watching to see them cover the latest ways to show up in AI overviews, the importance of external validation, whether SEO is dead, and more. Next, you’ll get an insider’s tips for maximizing SEO with Google Sheets.
An Insider Guide to Google Sheets for SEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvo4Y_IJoa0
Greg Gifford is an upcoming speaker at CMSEO, and if you want to know why his talk shouldn’t be missed, watch this talk he gave at the BrightonSEO Conference earlier this year, which was just released to the public.
In it, he addresses SEOs who don’t have experience with spreadsheets and reveals what’s possible when you use sheets as a complete tool.
According to Greg, the real power of Sheets lies in understanding advanced formulas and Apps Scripts. Greg teaches you how to move beyond simple VLOOKUPs so you can unlock the power of Google Sheets.
Beginners will learn the value of paste formatting, color coding for team collaboration, grouping for organization, and more. He shows you how you can rapidly increase the speed of your work by using features like data slicers, cell range names, and conditional statements.
If any of those terms are new to you, this presentation may be just the guide you need to start adding sheet power to your SEO. Check out the full video to learn more. You’ll get real-world examples of various use cases and explanations of the formulas and App Scripts used.
Next, you can learn how AI prompts can be used to build a website, or even several of them at no cost.
I Built 4 Websites with ONE AI Prompt (All Hosted for $0)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwoAGlPg95g
Upcoming CMSEO speaker James Oliver shares this fun look at how he built and hosted several websites for free using a range of AI tools. He built the sites using Claude, ChatGPT, Lovable, and Vode Dev and then hosted them for free using Lovable’s in-built hosting, Versel, and Cloudflare.
First, he shows you the sites he created using his process. They include a throwback 80s site, an app that automates complaint letters, and a test homepage. While he admits that most sites took an hour or more to create, they were all built in AI and hosted for free. He shows you how.
He walks you through the steps he uses to develop the prompts. For each step, he shows you what tools he uses to automate the information he needs and provides you with the parts you need to finish your prompt.
In addition to instructions, he provides much helpful commentary on what tools offer the best experience and the shortest path to building spontaneous sites like these. He offers some insights on what tools may be the best, depending on the LLMs you can access.
Check out the complete video to find out how you can build and host websites for free using LLMs. Next, you’ll learn what steps make the biggest difference with on-page SEO in 2025.
Mastering On-Page SEO: Kyle Roof Shares The Secrets You’re Missing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWEx2lA6QOM
Coming CMSEO speaker Kyle Roof appears as a guest on this episode of the Sterling Sky show. The hosts sit down with Kyle to cover the new basics of on-page SEO and the principles that should be at the foundation of your on-page strategy.
They cover many terms you need to be caught up with to diagnose on-page issues correctly, including siloing, URL structures, crawl budgets, and entity optimization. They also review which older strategies, like Guest Posting, may not be as effective as they once were.
As an extra bonus, Kyle and the host also conduct a full live content audit so that you can see the issues that get their attention and how they respond to them using the most recent methods. The problems they cover here could be an excellent guide for your own site.
Later, they challenge some old perceptions about on-page optimization by reviewing some surprising SEO test results from recent experiments. For example, one recent test by Kyle showed him that schema is still not having an effect, but purchased links are still (temporarily).
Check out the complete video to learn everything you need to know about on-page optimization. Next, you’ll get video marketing advice you can use to drive more engagement from your YouTube videos.
Forcing Engagement, CTR for YouTube to Help Your Rankings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWuFI6peejY
CMSEO speaker Craig Campbell shares his tricks for getting engagement on YouTube videos. He explains the engagement methods that pay off for him and how you can start making them pay off for your own marketing channels.
He identifies his engagement as mainly coming from one of three sources: his email list, his YT subscriber list, and his wider social media presence. He recommends an email list to attract early viewers and suggests that you use YouTube’s features to push notifications to subscribers.
The advice becomes much more comprehensive. He explains some of the ways he builds engagement using tools you may not have found yet. He also walks you through each screen of the tools he uses so you can see how he gets the output needed for the next steps.
For some advanced engagement-driving tasks, Craig recommends that you hire freelancers to help you reach the people that you need to. He describes how these strategies work, and even provides templates for the ads you’ll need to do the same thing.
Check out the complete video for some great advice on getting more engagement. Next, an SEO pro argues that the convergence of AI and social media may represent one of the biggest opportunities ever.
AI + Social Media = The Biggest Opportunity of Our Lifetime
https://youtu.be/OQwHXDgKaT8?si=VBjFsBiucOlEHZW6
Gary Vee isn’t joining us at CMSEO, but social media marketers will appreciate not missing this video in the month’s roundup. It has generated a lot of chatter for its predictions about where SMM is going next.
In it, Gary brings you a recorded keynote and Q&A session in which he addressed some of the biggest topics in social media marketing and the collision of AI and social media that is already starting to play out.
Gary discusses why he thinks AI represents a monumental shift, and how it can allow one person to scale the work that used to be done by dozens. He talks about how he plans to use the technology going forward, including by generating thousands of pieces of AI content a day.
Over more than an hour of discussion, he also touches on many other questions of the future. He talks about the mistakes companies make when hiring for social media, why brand will matter more than anything in the future, and why a personal brand is the ultimate funnel.
Check out the complete video for a lot of analysis on AI and the future of social media marketing. In the last videos for the month, you’ll explore whether you’re SEO strategy is ready for AI search.
Is Your SEO Strategy Ready for AI Search?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji4YiGp-FNM
CMSEO speaker Steve Toth joins Josh Spilker of AirOps to discuss what makes a strategy ready for the changes coming with AI Search.
They start by examining who appears in LLMs by the numbers. They cover the brands that are doing the best according to the most recent data. Established brands, in particular, have a heavy advantage in LLMs, and new companies have a much steeper hill to climb for attention.
Josh and Steve also examine how LLMs and SEO content are becoming different. They discuss content that is especially useful to LLMs, such as comparison content and highly niche pages that can be matched to newer conversational queries.
At the end of the discussion, which lasted more than an hour, they discussed some of the AI search myths that have begun to spread and applied evidence and experience to bust them. For example, both seemed to agree that SEO is not at all dead by the numbers.
That’s good news for everyone still working in SEO, and it means that you won’t want to miss all the new headlines that are coming in next month’s roundup!
