Articles

seo Article

<hr /> SEO is a hard-fought battle. Marketers spend a lot of time – and treasure – on manual audits, digging through spreadsheets and poring over tables just to make an incremental dent in performance. Meanwhile, they’re wrestling with the cognitive overload of juggling multiple tools across the stack, forcing swivel-chair moments as they gaze into a swarm of data.Of course, the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2025/09/03/ai-is-destroying-seo-rank-now-requires-answer-engine-optimization/">seismic shift to AI answer engines</a> is compounding an already precarious challenge. Keeping content accurate, structured, and discoverable across both traditional search engines and AI-driven discovery platforms like ChatGPT is haranguing teams in a vice grip as website traffic withers on the vine – and institutional metrics go out the window.  But this is where <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/kontentai">Kontent.ai </a>is building on its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/agentic-cms-why-kontentais-vision-for-the-future-of-content-management-is-inspiring">“Agentic CMS” foundation</a> to deliver some relief. Today, the company announced a set of new workflows that are purpose-built to impact the cost and friction associated with these challenges. They’re designed to enhance not only traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but the emerging and uber-critical practice of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_engine_optimization">Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).</a><h3 id="building-on-an-ai-vision-and-heritage">Building on an AI vision and heritage</h3>Kontent.ai has long embraced its artificial intelligence roots (it’s been part of the name since day one), but repositioning its value as an Agentic CMS speaks to its laser focus on AI and its impact on content management and operations. That gives it an edge for addressing the existential challenges that traditional SEO and GEO are presenting to brands and marketers.According to Kontent.ai’s VP of Customer Success, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukas-martinak/">Lukas Martinak,</a> something has changed in the CMS and digital world, and brands are feeling the heat. This came into crystal clarity at the recent <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">Boye &amp; Company CMS Kickoff 26. </a>“There was one topic that kept coming up in almost every session and every hallway chat: GEO. Generative Engine Optimization,” he said. “Traffic is down, AI answers are up, and GEO has moved to the boardroom.”He’s absolutely right. Unlike SEO, the C-Suite is hyper-focused on GEO, making it a mission-critical imperative as zero-click searches and crashing traffic become the status quo. This is where Kontent.ai’s new workflows are aiming to make an impact. <h3 id="optimization-without-the-manual-madness">Optimization without the manual madness</h3>Like an intern that never stops for coffee breaks, Kontent.ai’s autonomous agents continuously analyze content for a bevy of issues that can impact SEO and GEO – detecting things like missing or inconsistent metadata, unclear structure, outdated terminology, and weak internal linking. Users can also prompt for an SEO analysis and recommendations across content like blog posts. <figure class="image image-style-align-center image_resized" style="width:67.69%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/seo-analysis.png" /></figure>Source: Kontent.ai But the automation goes even further. Instead of simply surfacing issues for manual follow-up, these intelligent agents can recommend improvements or even apply updates directly within Kontent.ai, mitigating the need for repeated audits and manual rework.  <figure class="image image-style-align-center image_resized" style="width:68.66%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/image.jpeg" alt="A screenshot of a computer

AI-generated content may be incorrect." /></figure>Source: Kontent.ai According to Kontent.ai, some early but compelling use cases demonstrate the success of these new agentic workflows. For example, a global organization managing more than 400,000 content items used them to automate SEO metadata audits and implementation, cutting optimization time by as much as 80%.There’s more. When applied consistently across editorial workflows, Kontent reported that teams saw palpable results – including a 30% increase in organic impressions and expanded keyword coverage, all without increasing paid media spending.  As GEO surfaces as a business mandate, brands are rapidly adopting practices and channeling resources towards optimizing for AI visibility. Many of the agent-driven principles for SEO also support GEO, as they share structural and foundational tenets. With Kontent.ai’s automation, teams can help ensure these content structures are clear and concise for AI systems to interpret accurately – particularly as buyers are increasingly turning to generative search and AI assistants earlier in their discovery. It's worth noting that, unlike most modern SEO tools that are used after publishing, Kontent.ai embeds its optimization directly into the content model and enforces it universally. The net effect is simplification: agent-driven changes are validated against editorial governance, enabling teams to scale optimization without increasing operational complexity or risk. “As SEO and AI-driven discovery converge, optimization can no longer rely on manual effort,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/iannorton/">Ian Norton,</a> VP Marketing at Kontent.ai. “By embedding agentic SEO and GEO directly into content operations, we help teams reduce cost, improve performance, and stay in control at scale.” <h3 id="the-verdict">The verdict</h3>Kontent.ai continues to impress with its clear, elegant, and high-utility application of agentic AI across its platform. While many tools are introducing complexity, Kontent’s focus on real-world use cases for applying its agentic capabilities is a winning position as brands scrutinize the value of their AI tooling and investments. Adding these workflows is yet another example of how it addresses real problems that marketers and content editors face when managing the minutiae of SEO – and the emerging morass of GEO. My recommendation: Since demoing Kontent.ai’s earliest foray into agentic territory, I was instantly drawn to its concise framing of the problem and how its focused application of AI is the solution. That concise delivery is one of the key reasons why it won our “CMS Idol” competition at the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">Boye &amp; Company CMS Kickoff 26</a>. With its headless heritage and composable posture, Kontent presents a great solution for enterprise-grade stacks that are leaning AI-forward and require speed and control at scale. During your demo, pay close attention to the real-world content management use cases that their agents are solving – it’s all the proof you’ll need. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:30.06%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/cms-summit-26-logo.jpg" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-summit-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26">CMS Summit 26</a></h4>May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, GermanyThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Summit brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Frankfurt, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26/tickets">so book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:40.76%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a>

Kontent.ai Adds AI-Powered SEO and GEO Workflows, Accelerating Content Optimization and Enhancing AI Visibility

matt-garrepy

<hr /> Well, it happened. I’ve been predicting a move like this for a while, although I thought it might be an up-and-comer like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.conductor.com/">Conductor</a> or even a niche startup like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://otterly.ai/">Otterly.ai</a> elsewhere in the stack.  But then again, it’s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/adobe-experience-manager">Adobe</a>. And when they go, they go big.And that’s what they’re doing with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/11/adobe-to-acquire-semrush">acquisition of Semrush,</a> a stalwart of modern martech and one of the “must-have” tools for search engine optimization over the last decade. Adobe just announced that it will purchase Semrush for the tidy sum of $1.9 billion in an all-cash transaction for $12 per share.The deal is said to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approvals. It should be “smoother” sailing, despite the pothole in the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/whats-under-the-fig-leaf-the-naked-truth-about-the-figma-ipo-and-the-markets-appetite-for-tech">rearview that is Figma</a>. Semrush is, comparatively, a tame acquisition that’s almost 20 times less breathtaking than that debacle. No doubt, Adobe is posturing to expand its leadership in the realm of marketing intelligence and the concentration on Generative Search Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). As competitors like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/optimizely">Optimizely</a> position themselves as <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/welcome-to-the-geo-ready-cms-optimizely-adds-new-features-to-enhance-ai-powered-search">“GEO-ready” platforms</a>, the race is on to give brands more comprehensive tools that address the shift towards AI search discovery.Despite this focus on marketing-centric tools that address the pressures of AI, Adobe lives beyond a single category like DXP or CMP, evolving its value to that of customer experience orchestration in the agentic AI era – and pointing its collective powers at the complete content supply chain, customer engagement, and brand visibility.It's doing all of this with its suite of industry-leading products like the ubiquitous <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/adobe-experience-manager">Adobe Experience Manager (AEM),</a> its unified <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/products/adobe-analytics.html">Adobe Analytics</a> suite, and the recently launched <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/products/brand-concierge.html">Adobe Brand Concierge</a> for creating interactive, AI-powered conversational journeys.Adding Semrush to this puzzle brings the picture into sharp relief, giving marketers a holistic view of how their brands appear across the new frontier of LLMs, as well as owned channels, legacy search, and the broader web. It also gives them more control over managing their visibility across the entire ecosystem. “Brand visibility is being reshaped by generative AI, and brands that don’t embrace this new opportunity risk losing relevance and revenue,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/achakravarthy/">Anil Chakravarthy,</a> president of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business. “With Semrush, we’re unlocking GEO for marketers as a new growth channel alongside their SEO, driving more visibility, customer engagement and conversions across the ecosystem.”<h3 id="cmos-need-better-tools-to-master-ai-search">CMOs need better tools to master AI search</h3>The Chief Marketing Officer’s job has always been a little cursed. Often a revolving door of talent that lives and dies by the numbers, it has recently grown a bigger backbone when it comes to strategic performance. What's at stake? Pretty much everything. Enterprises are relying on marketing to deliver the goods at a breakneck pace. Meanwhile, CMOs are expected to make sense out of metric tons of data from a wide range of sources and tools – and make actionable decisions that drive growth. It's a tough racket, and forget the fact that a CMO's marketing team is also being challenged by cognitive overload. While brand equity and visibility are key, CMOs face a reckoning with results. According to a report from NIQ, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251118947080/en/CMOs-Face-a-Reputation-and-Results-Reckoning-According-to-NIQs-2026-Outlook">84% of CMOs now prioritize ROI</a> as their primary metric for budget allocation, signaling pressure to drive short-term conversion over long-term brand growth.And driving those conversions is search. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/google-cloud-platform">Google</a> still crushes AI answer engines like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perplexity.ai/">Perplexity</a>, maintaining roughly 90% of the global search market share. Google’s traffic has continued to increase into 2025 due in part to its new <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://gemini.google/overview/">Gemini-powered AI Overviews</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://search.google/ways-to-search/ai-mode/">AI Mode</a> features.But the landscape is starting to shift. ChatGPT’s adoption has been downright mindboggling, reaching 100 million users within two months of launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer app ever. By late 2024, it was reportedly logging around 1 billion interactions per day. By one account, it could <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ttms.com/llm-powered-search-vs-traditional-search-2025-2030-forecast/">surpass Google by 2028,</a> and new data from <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/blog/adi-october-2025-holiday-shopping-actuals">Adobe Analytics</a> showed that traffic from generative AI sources to U.S. retail sites increased by 1,200% year-over-year in October.As consumers increasingly turn to answer engines for information, recommendations, and purchase decisions, CMOs need tools that address generative AI platforms so they can enhance their visibility across these new customer interfaces and drive conversions. Organizations that invest in GEO – alongside their SEO capabilities – are poised to keep their brands well-represented, more easily discovered, and trusted across owned and earned channels.<h3 id="a-legacy-of-seo-innovation-with-a-new-focus-on-geo">A legacy of SEO innovation with a new focus on GEO</h3>Semrush is the gold standard in SEO. It provides a deep cache of rich information, from competitive insights to keyword research to campaign planning. It’s also incredibly intuitive and accessible, with many third-party platforms surfacing Semrush data in their analytics dashboards. For more than ten years, Semrush has armed marketers with “traditional” search engine optimization capabilities. But its recent gains in the development of GEO capabilities – specifically with its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.semrush.com/ai-seo/">AI Visibility Toolkit</a> – are helping brands enhance visibility, expand audience reach, and remain discoverable in AI search. The good news for marketers is that the core principles of SEO also apply to GEO. Translation: They work together, and you don’t need to abandon your SEO strategy to build your presence across the AI engines. AI assistants provide helpful and (hopefully) accurate information to users, and they pull that information from the same internet your SEO-focused content lives on. Generally speaking, the more your brand is associated with the topics you want to focus on, the more likely it is to be referenced in an AI-generated answer.The combination of Adobe and Semrush could be a catalyst for even greater insight across both the SEO and GEO channels. Marketers need both, and Adobe's consolidation will likely benefit both competencies. “Adobe is an industry leader in helping marketers create personalized customer experiences at scale. With the advent of LLMs and AI-driven search, brands need to understand where and how their customers are engaging in these new channels,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamrwagner/">Bill Wagner,</a> chief executive officer of Semrush. “This combination provides marketers more insights and capabilities to increase their discoverability across today’s evolving digital landscape.”From a performance standpoint, Semrush has been bringing the rain. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://increv.co/academy/semrush-users/">As of last year,</a> it boasted nearly 1.2 million users with annual revenue of over $300 million. In its most recent quarter, it drove 33% year-over-year ARR growth in its enterprise customer segment, earning the trust of industry leaders like Amazon, JPMorganChase, and TikTok.It’s worth noting that Semrush does have a large cohort of free-tier users (by one estimate, it represents as much as 90% of its base). This speaks to the company’s commitment to deliver value while building a strong SaaS pipeline to future paid users. Will Adobe maintain that? Only time will tell, but it’s a great example of a “Big Give” that works.<h3 id="the-verdict">The verdict</h3>GEO is becoming a crucial objective for brands and their marketing teams. This is a non-negotiable requirement of their modern tooling, and will inform the decision-making as they assess technologies to light these dark alleyways in their marketing intelligence.  Semrush and its peers might be innovating on the edge, but we’re still in catch-up mode. Every day could be another <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://greylock.com/greymatter/the-deepseek-moment/">DeepSeek moment</a> of change, threatening to send practitioners back into a well of shadows when it comes to LLM behaviors. As such, having the scale and skunkworks that Adobe provides could inject more value into the GEO roadmap, giving enterprises greater confidence around the futureproofing.This isn't “guesttimation” for me. I’ve personally relied on Semrush for years to analyze competitors, test longtail keywords, identify and root out toxic backlinks, and more. It’s a fantastic tool, and that’s why I think this is a smart move. Semrush is a solid, long-standing brand that’s built deep trust with its community, and that brand loyalty could benefit the transition to Adobe – a shift that hasn’t always been easy on cultures or communities.Is it worth the bucks? As far as the tendered deal is concerned, the math around multiples appears sound and reflects what we’re seeing elsewhere (early to say if it’s a steal or a deal). While the numbers aren’t as mammoth, 2025 has been a solid year for M&amp;A, tracking a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.reuters.com/business/global-ma-activity-up-10-first-nine-months-2025-study-shows-2025-10-28/">10% increase in overall activity</a> in the first nine months of the year. A lot of that has been led by tech and specifically AI-related acquisitions, but the martech realm has been active, starting with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/contentstack-just-acquired-lytics-a-real-time-customer-data-platform-heres-why-it-matters">purchase of the Lytics CDP</a> by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/contentstack">Contentstack</a> in January of this year.Competitive pressure is a clear driver. As players like Optimizely and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/sitecore">Sitecore</a> expand their agentic AI features and evolve what a complete martech stack looks like, GEO capabilities are becoming front and center. And as the research indicates, conversions are going to be the key metric for ROI – and AI search is becoming a bigger piece of the integrated pie. What’s next? A lot. With the introduction of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/">ChatGPT’s Agentic Commerce Protocol,</a> we’re now seeing the potential for more retail transactions shifting to LLMs – creating even greater urgency for brands to elevate their presence across these channels. As we look ahead to the agent-to-agent frontier powered by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro">MCP,</a> it’s fair to predict that these buying motions will be faster and increasingly automated.Look, there’s more here than just broadening the scope of Adobe’s marketing intelligence. It’s a signal that the race is on to shape the customer experience within the generative AI horizon – and giving marketers the best tools to meet the moment.Enterprises want composable solutions that offer adjacent integrations but include purpose-built features to help them address the immediate challenges of the AI era. And they can’t wait for tomorrow – they have to act today. That’s what Adobe is delivering: the promise of speed and scale for an agentic world.Can you feel the rush? <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:29.67%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/10/image-1761136749603.png" /><h4 id="live-webinar:-can-we-ever-get-composable-without-complexity?"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://umbraco.com/webinar-cmscritic">Live Webinar: Can We Ever Get Composable Without Complexity?</a></h4>November 20, 2025 – 6 PM (CET) / 5 PM (GMT) / 12 PM (EST)Composable architecture promised to simplify digital experience creation by giving organizations the flexibility to combine the technologies that met their needs. But for many enterprises, it’s done the opposite, which has led to complex integrations, spiraling costs, and what some are now referring to as composable regret. In this live conversation, Umbraco CEO Mats Persson joins Matt Garrepy, Chief Content Officer at CMS Critic, for a candid exploration of what went wrong in the first wave of composable and what needs to change. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://umbraco.com/webinar-cmscritic">Register for the webinar.</a> <img style="width:29.08%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/10/image-1761594434824.png" /><h4 id="typo3-conference-2025"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://t3con.typo3.com/">TYPO3 Conference 2025</a></h4>November 25–27, 2025 – Düsseldorf, GermanyT3CON is the premier annual event for web professionals, developers, marketers, and decision-makers. Much more than just a TYPO3-focused conference, T3CON spotlights the latest trends, innovations, and leaders shaping the future of content management, covering everything from grassroots initiatives to new technologies, strategies, and success stories. The event is designed to empower businesses and organizations with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive in the evolving digital landscape. The conference culminates in an awards ceremony celebrating the best TYPO3 projects across various industries. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://t3con.typo3.com/">Get your ticket.</a> <img style="width:31.44%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/08/cms-kickoff-2026-logo.png" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-kickoff-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">CMS Kickoff 2026</a></h4>January 13-14, 2026 – St. Petersburg, FLMeet industry leaders at our fourth annual CMS Kickoff – the industry's premier global CMS event. Similar to a traditional kickoff, we reflect on recent trends and share stories from the frontlines. Additionally, we will delve into the current happenings and shed light on the future. Prepare for an unparalleled in-person CMS conference experience that will equip you to move things forward. This is an exclusive event – space is limited, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">so secure your tickets today.</a>

Feel the GEO Rush: Adobe to Acquire Semrush for $1.9B to Enhance AI Search

Conductor AI ‘Revs Up’ Brand Discoverability in Generative AI Answer Engines

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dan-drapeau">Dan Drapeau </a>is Managing Director at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://dxpcatalyst.com/">DXP Catalyst Consulting</a> and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> Search is changing. Instead of typing keywords and clicking through ranked pages, users increasingly expect fast, relevant answers, often delivered through conversational tools like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perplexity.ai/">Perplexity</a>, or intelligent site search. They’re landing on your website “from the side,” bypassing the homepage, and expecting to ask questions in natural language and get immediate responses.This shift, accelerated by the rise of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-search/">Search Generative Experience (SGE)</a> and the emergence of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://searchengineland.com/what-is-generative-engine-optimization-geo-444418">Generative Engine Optimization (GEO),</a> is reshaping how digital platforms are selected and structured. Traditional SEO practices are no longer sufficient. Content must now be discoverable by both search engines and generative AI systems.To keep pace, organizations are reevaluating their digital architecture. Some are adopting full-featured Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs), while others are building their own solution ecosystems using best-of-breed tools like CMS, enterprise search, analytics, and more. Regardless of the approach, the same principles apply: content must be structured for reuse, delivered intelligently across channels, and trackable at every touchpoint.Here are three key areas I focus on when helping organizations evaluate the readiness of their digital experience ecosystem, which is what a modern DXP truly represents, in the era of conversational search.<h3 id="1.--structured-content-and-findability-by-design">1.  Structured Content and Findability by Design</h3>At the heart of any DXP or composable solution is the content layer, powered by a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/what-is-a-content-management-system-cms">content management system (CMS).</a> It governs how content is created, structured, and published. To support SGE and GEO, this layer must do more than manage pages. It needs to produce structured, reusable content that systems can understand and deliver in context.Generative AI tools require predictable, well-modeled inputs. Content trapped in PDFs, inconsistent formats, or unstructured blobs is unlikely to be surfaced accurately. Structured content models, semantic tagging, and field-level metadata are essential for discoverability.When evaluating a DXP or CMS, look for:<ul><li>API-accessible metadata and structured content elements</li><li>Support for semantic models and content relationships</li><li>Schema markup applied consistently across content types</li><li>Editorial workflows for FAQs, summaries, or step-by-step formats</li><li>Extensibility for AI use cases like conversational grounding or previews</li></ul>Findability starts with how content is modeled. If it cannot be accessed or interpreted by AI, it will be excluded from conversational experiences.<h3 id="2.--search-integration-that-supports-conversational-interfaces">2.  Search Integration That Supports Conversational Interfaces</h3>Conversational search is not limited to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/chatbot/">chatbots.</a> It can be delivered through a standard search bar, as long as the system can interpret natural language, understand context, and return more tailored responses. The interface may look familiar, but the experience is far more dynamic.Delivering on that promise requires search capabilities that extend beyond CMS indexing. Your architecture should support:<ul><li>API-based indexing of structured content and product data</li><li>Multi-source search across support content, blogs, product catalogs (if applicable), and more</li><li>Fine-tuned ranking, filtering, and fallback logic</li><li>Compatibility with conversational UX, such as voice or natural language input</li></ul>Some DXPs are starting to offer search integrations with conversational overlays or even <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/retrieval-augmented-generation/">RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)</a> frameworks. Even if you’re not enabling full conversational search today, the technical foundation should be ready.<h3 id="3.--governance-and-observability">3.  Governance and Observability</h3>As generative interfaces become the first point of interaction for many users, governance and observability are no longer optional. Teams must control what is published, how it is indexed, and how it performs in real-world usage.Your CMS or DXP should provide access controls, publishing workflows, preview tools, and the ability to manage visibility through scoped indexing, robots.txt, or noindex tags. While you cannot always prevent AI from referencing public content, you can influence how and where it appears.Beyond control, your team needs visibility. Modern platforms should offer analytics that go beyond traffic and conversions to include:<ul><li>User search queries and failed results</li><li>AI interpretation of structured content</li><li>Behavioral patterns that reveal content gaps</li><li>Metadata performance insights and tuning opportunities</li></ul>These feedback loops help you identify what users are looking for, where they are not finding it, and how to improve content delivery. Observability is critical for adapting to shifting search behavior.<h3 id="what-to-do-next">What to Do Next</h3>You do not need to solve for every edge case today. But as SGE and conversational interfaces gain traction, platform evaluations must evolve.Use this checklist to guide your next discussion:<ul><li>Is your content layer structured to support AI-ready delivery?</li><li>Can your systems surface and connect that content across search, personalization, and chat interfaces?</li><li>Do you have insight into how users are interacting with content, including intent signals and discovery gaps?</li></ul>Search is no longer just a feature. It is becoming the interface between your users and your brand. Whether you are investing in a traditional DXP or building a best-of-breed composable stack, choose an architecture that is structured, discoverable, and observable – one that supports GEO from day one. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:31.83%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/01/cms-connect-2025-logo.png" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-connect-25"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect25">CMS Connect 25</a></h4>August 5-6, 2025 – Montreal, CanadaWe are delighted to present the second annual summer edition of our signature global conference dedicated to the content management community! CMS Connect will be held again in beautiful Montreal, Canada, and feature a unique blend of masterclasses, insightful talks, interactive discussions, impactful learning sessions, and authentic networking opportunities. Join vendors, agencies, and customers from across our industry as we engage and collaborate around the future of content management – and hear from the top thought leaders at the only vendor-neutral, in-person conference exclusively focused on CMS. Space is limited for this event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect25">so book your seats today.</a>

3 Things to Look for in a DXP as Conversational Search Changes the Game

dan-drapeau

As AI-generated search grows, Otterly is utterly awesome for marketers. Here’s why

Zengenti’s Insytful Offers an Easy, Affordable Solution for Managing Accessibility and Governance

Shopify - The global commerce platform

Build your business with Shopify to sell online, offline, and everywhere in between.

The global commerce platform

#ffffff

<a href="https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-are-keywords-simple-keyword-definition/" target="_blank">Keywords</a> are the lifeblood of SEO. When used properly, they can juice the search performance of any website and drive more traffic. Of course, they've become somewhat of a precious commodity when utilized for Google Ads campaigns, fluctuating like the price of gold based on their volume metrics.
For most website builder platforms, the fundamentals of technical SEO (search engine optimization) are often engineered into the platform on an architectural level. This might be in the form of structured data on a website template that governs the use of an H1, H2, aria-label, and so on. But there hasn't been as much direct integration with rich keyword tools, leaving marketers to run separate reports and seed keywords in their CMS.
That's about to change for <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/wix-to-host-first-ever-developers-conference-wix-devcon-2022/">Wix</a>, a leading SaaS website builder for creating, managing, and growing websites. The company just announced a partnership with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/semrush-and-yoast-partner-to-enhance-wordpress-seo-and-digital-marketing/">Semrush</a>, a leading online visibility management platform, that will enable Wix users to access Semrush’s SEO keyword data directly through the Wix Platform. The integration will help users identify the right keywords for their website to help improve their rankings in search results.
<h2>Semrush brings industry-leading SEO keyword optimization to Wix websites</h2>
Powered by Semrush’s global database of more than 21 billion keywords, the new integration enables users to easily find the most relevant and effective keywords for their website without leaving the Wix platform. This includes access to critical metrics like search intent and keyword difficulty generated from Semrush’s rich SEO toolkit. 
The integration is available through <a href="https://support.wix.com/en/article/wix-seo-wiz-creating-your-seo-checklist-in-the-wix-seo-wiz" target="_blank">Wix’s SEO Setup Checklist</a>, a tool that guides Wix users on how to optimize their website for SEO and get it indexed on Google – with actionable steps and educational resources.
In addition to performance, reliability, and security improvements, Wix has recently augmented its suite of SEO tools. This includes adding 25 new SEO features and products over the past year, as well as hundreds of SEO-related enhancements. As a result of this focused investment, the SEO community has begun embracing Wix. 
The Semrush integration will live inside the Wix dashboard in the SEO Tools section:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/09/wix-semrush-seo-tools.jpg" alt="Wix SEO Tools screen" />
The keyword insights from Semrush provide useful metrics such as:
<ul>
<li>keyword volume</li>
<li>keyword trends showing how popular the keyword is and how popular the keyword has been over time</li>
<li>keyword difficulty, which shows how competitive that particular keyword is, and search intent (i.e. commercial, informational)</li>
</ul>
You can also select and add your favorite keywords and save them to your SEO setup checklist:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/09/wix-keyword-insights-screenshot.jpg" alt="Wix EMRush SEO Tools dashboard" />
<h2>A partnership aligned around website experience and organic SEO</h2>
The new integration with Semrush is available to all Wix users in English. Users will need to have a Semrush account to leverage the integration; the usage quota available will depend on the account connected to their website, starting at a daily limit of 10 words for free Semrush accounts.
“It’s always been our mission to help businesses and search professionals have one unified platform to grow their site’s visibility in search engines,” said Nati Elimelech, Head of SEO at Wix. “With this integration, we’re taking another notable step in democratizing SEO by enabling our users to conduct better research and choose the right keywords and topics to focus on in their content strategy, right from within their dashboard. We are dedicated to making SEO more accessible to everyone and helping our users to make better decisions that will impact their organic growth.”
Both companies appear bullish about the value of the integration. For Wix, arming its users with advanced SEO marketing features may differentiate the platform in a dense market of competitors like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/squarespace-a-diy-website-builder-1/">Squarespace</a> – and enhancing its portfolio with foundational tools like Semrush will help amplify its perceived value, improve loyalty across its community, and attract new users.
For Semrush, Wix presents a broad channel of access to website owners who might now be thinking about the importance of keywords but now have easy access to an industry-leading toolset. 
“By leveraging Semrush’s keyword databases and metrics, Wix is giving users the necessary tools to find smart opportunities and improve their ranking on Google. As Organic Search traffic is incredibly valuable, the new integration in Wix can help to grow their businesses,” said Marcus Tober, SVP of Enterprise Solutions at Semrush. “Now is the time for business owners to take website and online marketing management into their own hands, and platforms like Wix and Semrush can help them do it.”
Want to learn how to conduct keyword research with Wix's Semrush integration? Visit <a href="https://www.wix.com/seo/learn" target="_blank">Wix's SEO Hub</a> and explore this great <a href="https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/resource/keyword-research-wix-semrush-integration" target="_blank">tutorial.</a>
<h2>About Semrush</h2>
Semrush is a leading online visibility management SaaS platform that enables businesses globally to run search engine optimization, pay-per-click, content, social media and competitive research campaigns and get measurable results from online marketing. Semrush offers insights and solutions for companies to build, manage, and measure campaigns across various marketing channels. Semrush, with over 91,000 paying customers, is headquartered in Boston and has offices in Philadelphia, Trevose, Austin, Dallas, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Limassol, Prague, Warsaw, and Yerevan.
<h2>About Wix</h2>
Wix is a leading platform for creating, managing and growing a digital presence. What began as a website builder in 2006 is now a complete platform providing users with enterprise-grade performance, security and reliable infrastructure. Offering a wide range of commerce and business solutions, and advanced SEO and marketing tools, Wix enables users to have full ownership of their brand, their data, and their relationships with their customers. With a focus on continuous innovation and the delivery of new features and products, anyone can build a powerful digital presence to fulfill their dreams on Wix.

Wix and Semrush Partner to Provide Users with Valuable Keyword Data to Help Grow Online Visibility

cms-critic-staff

Image of Wix and Semrush logos against a purple background

<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/siteimprove-seo-provides-all-in-one-capabilities-for-enhancing-search-performance/">Siteimprove</a>, the enterprise SaaS company with solutions for improving website governance and performance, <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/company/press/siteimprove-s-enterprise-platform-delivers-275-return-on-investment/" target="_blank">announced</a> the findings of a new Forrester TEI study – demonstrating that their platform delivered a 275 percent return on investment (ROI) over three years for a composite organization. 
The study also suggests that the Siteimprove investment could be paid back in less than six months – an impressive ROI by any measure and a testament to the accessibility leader's value across the digital stack. 
Despite being known for their best-of-breed <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/accessibility/" target="_blank">accessibility scanning and monitoring solutions</a>, Siteimprove also offers a robust <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/seo/" target="_blank">SEO platform</a> with a range of powerful enterprise features, including enhanced search capabilities. 
Siteimprove has also added two new tools to their ecosystem – <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/ads/" target="_blank">Siteimprove Ads</a> and <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/performance/" target="_blank">Siteimprove Performance</a> – which help simplify Google Ad management and make website performance data more understandable and actionable. This <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/siteimprove-seo-provides-all-in-one-capabilities-for-enhancing-search-performance/" target="_blank">combined suite</a> provides marketers with greater control and insight across their martech stack. 
"Siteimprove's performance-with-a-purpose optimization allows marketers to spend more time on efficient, effective content creation that truly impacts revenue," said Shane Paladin, CEO of Siteimprove. "The Forrester [TEI] analysis validates our core mission: helping marketing teams consistently deliver the most accessible, inclusive, relevant, discoverable and usable content."
<h2>Making sense of TEI and ROI</h2>
TEI, short for Total Economic Impact, is a methodology developed by <a href="https://www.forrester.com/policies/tei/" target="_blank">Forrester Research</a> that's been used by technology consumers and businesses for over 20 years. TEI provides business value justification analysis to help organizations understand the financial impact of a technology investment. It consists of four components for evaluating the impact of an investment: cost, benefits, flexibility, and risk. 
The Siteimprove TEI study included clients from across North America and Europe that are focused on providing a more consistent and elevated digital experience for their customers. Based on the findings, prior to using Siteimprove, the interviewees noted how their organizations lacked the necessary capabilities to deliver cohesive, high-quality digital experiences across their websites. 
By using Siteimprove to identify errors and performance issues within their digital experiences, participants in the study were able to:
<ul>
<li>Refine their site design and UX, leading to nearly $415,000 in savings: With Siteimprove, users were able to methodically apply an insights-driven approach to page redesigns, content creation, and marketing campaign spending. This led to an increase in site visits, higher registrations, and a reduction in marketing spending.</li>
<li>Improve accessibility, resulting in almost $179,000 in savings: By addressing key accessibility concerns such as readability and inclusivity, companies enabled website visitors with disabilities to interact with their brand more effectively. In addition, customers were able to expand their audiences by offering a more seamless experience to a broader base of users. </li>
<li>Automate monitoring and workflow capabilities, leading to more than $75,000 in savings: By leveraging Siteimproves's automated tools and resources, organizations were able to reduce the average time spent on error detection and content monitoring by 90%.</li>
<li>Bolster traffic from SEO, leading to nearly $110,000 in savings: Through web content optimization – primarily the identification and remediation of technical, content, user experience (UX), and mobile issues – Siteimprove users were able to enhance their website content, improve search engine rankings, and drive more traffic. </li>
</ul>
<h2>What customers had to say in the Forrester TEI study</h2>
TEI has become an invaluable resource for many organizations – and with the Forrester name behind it, the quality goes well beyond other independent research sources.
Still, there's no better indicator of success than the voice of the customer. To that end, the study also featured comments from interviewees that codified the benefits of Siteimprove. Here's one from the head of web marketing for an information technology company:
"We have multiple in-country based [sic] websites, all with different teams. I needed a solution that could help us centrally understand the quality of these sites and provide them with easy-to-understand actions to rectify the identified problems."
And another from a marketing analyst in the education field:
“I spend more time now planning optimizations and providing insights to the business. Previously, I was spending a lot of time collecting and manipulating data and not as much time learning from the data. Siteimprove definitely helps with that.”
There's more to glean from the full TEI study. Siteimprove provides a <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/tei-of-siteimprove/" target="_blank">free copy</a> on their website.
<h2>About the Forrester TEI Study</h2>
Total Economic Impact ™ (TEI) is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company's technology decision-making processes and assists vendors in communicating the value proposition of their products and services to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize IT initiatives' tangible value to senior management and other key business stakeholders.
<h2>About Siteimprove</h2>
Siteimprove's enterprise platform transforms content into the foundation of winning customer experiences that drive revenue. Marketing teams using Siteimprove's data-driven approach to consistently deliver content that meets strict digital accessibility requirements and is optimized for SEO, and marketing campaigns. Siteimprove works alongside DXPs, giving marketing and web teams end-to-end visibility throughout the content lifecycle. By automating time-consuming tasks, Siteimprove empowers marketers to deliver highly optimized content faster. Over 7,500 companies use Siteimprove to transform their content into revenue and is regularly recognized as a G2 leader across the board.

New Forrester TEI Study: Siteimprove Enterprise Platform Delivers 275% ROI

paris-tuzun

Image of Siteimprove logo with graphic showing ROI and payback of less than 6 months

New partnerships continue to emerge across the digital stack, and CMS platforms are reaping the benefits. Recently, SEMrush, a leading search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing platform <a href="https://www.semrush.com/news/semrush-and-yoast-announce-integration-partnership/">announced a strategic partnership with Yoast</a> – the most popular and widely-used SEO plugin for WordPress.
The partnership kicks off with an updated release of Yoast’s SEO plugin for WordPress, the leading open source content management system (CMS). Yoast SEO will now feature a tight integration with SEMrush’s extensive keyword database and SEO services, giving Yoast users access to smarter, SEO-focused keyword suggestions and data within the CMS post editor – and enhancing search engine indexability to drive qualified traffic.
For the <a href="/gutenberg-2-years-later-is-wordpress-better-off/">WordPress</a> community, Yoast is practically a household name. For years, this handy plugin has enabled users to control a multitude of attributes across websites, including meta descriptions, keywords, titles, and more. Yoast has proven to be a go-to solution for driving traffic from major search engines like Google and Bing to leading social media channels like Facebook.
SEMrush has long been regarded as a trusted brainstorming tool for keyword strategy. With standout features such as link building and site auditing, SEMrush provides users with a go-to checklist of features and capabilities for improving technical and on-page SEO.
“At a time when all businesses are becoming even more reliant on their digital strategy to thrive and survive, it is hard to overstate the significance of this partnership between SEMrush and Yoast, two highly regarded names in SEO,” said Eugene Levin, SEMrush’s Chief Strategy Officer. “We are thrilled to announce the seamless integration of one of the largest keyword databases on the market with Yoast’s unrivaled reach into WordPress-powered sites. As many of SEMrush clients run websites with WordPress, this partnership is an important one for our customers. We look forward to cooperating further with Yoast to help as many people as possible become the best digital marketers they can be.”
Yoast founder and Chief Product Officer Joost de Valk added, “As more and more people get online, we see that these people need help with keyword research. Previously we could not give our customers information regarding how people search, specifically which related searches there are for important search terms. Our integration with SEMrush not only makes this possible, it shows it right when and where you need it. I look forward to building out this feature to help people write better content, faster.”
In order to benefit from the new features in the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, users will need to have either a free or premium SEMrush account. The full set of SEMrush features available in Yoast SEO will help customers access related keywords that are similar to a user’s query, gather useful metrics for every keyword, and uncover new keyword ideas for their content.
You can download the Yoast SEO plugin <a href="https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/">here</a>.
Sign up for a free or premium SEMrush account <a href="https://www.semrush.com/signup/">here</a>.

SEMrush and Yoast Partner to Enhance WordPress SEO and Digital Marketing

In yet another active week for technology movers and shakers, Nordic Capital has signed a deal to become the majority shareholder in Danish-based <a href="/siteimprove-seo-provides-all-in-one-capabilities-for-enhancing-search-performance/">Siteimprove</a> – an enterprise SaaS company with solutions for improving website governance and performance.
Founded in 2003, Siteimprove has been focused on web usability, providing an all-in-one, cloud-based Digital Presence Optimization (DPO) platform. Their suite of tools and services help organizations enhance their digital accessibility, data privacy, compliance management (such as <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/">GDPR</a>), content quality and search engine optimization.
<h3 id="leaders-in-website-accessibility">Leaders in Website Accessibility</h3>
Siteimprove has built a strong reputation around their industry-leading accessibility solutions, helping websites deliver an equitable digital experience to people with disabilities. 
One key to Siteimprove’s growth has been an elevated demand for accessibility scanning and monitoring, as websites in places like the U.S. have been under fire for <a href="https://www.natlawreview.com/article/ada-website-litigation-likely-to-increase">ADA compliance litigation</a> – particularly in the public sector. As accessibility awareness has grown, Siteimprove has also matured its training and partner programs, and developed integrations with content management systems (CMS) to help accelerate adoption.
Additionally, Siteimprove’s SEO and analytics tools are powering digital marketing programs and helping brands to enhance their overall website performance. As more businesses pivot to digital transformation in a COVID-19 world, the value of search and website health are becoming more critical than ever.
<h3 id="why-did-nordic-capital-decide-to-invest-in-siteimprove">Why did Nordic Capital Decide to Invest in Siteimprove?</h3>
Nordic Capital stated that Siteimprove has significant long-term growth potential, driven by increasing market penetration, expansion in key customer segments, and past investments in product development and platform solutions. Their goal is to fund Siteimprove’s continued innovation and expansion while elevating awareness for their social mission.
“We have long admired Siteimprove as one of the top SaaS companies globally, with great potential for further growth due to its world-class product offering, strong customer base, and expanding market coverage,” said Fredrik Näslund, Partner and Head of Technology &amp; Payments, <a href="https://www.nordiccapital.com/">Nordic Capital Advisors</a>.
“Nordic Capital will draw upon its significant experience and success in developing technology companies, working closely with the management team to continue Siteimprove’s journey as a strong and sustainable company. We are impressed by the Company and how its products reduce inequality in society by helping people with disabilities gain access to a digitalized world and drive growth across essential digital disciplines.”
<h3 id="more-acquisitions-and-outside-investment">More Acquisitions and Outside Investment</h3>
The last few years have certainly seen a “buying spree” across the digital experience and eCommerce landscape, with Adobe <a href="https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2018/Adobe-Completes-Acquisition-of-Marketo/default.aspx">acquiring Marketo</a> <a href="https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2018/Adobe-Completes-Acquisition-of-Magento-Commerce/default.aspx">and Magento</a>, Acquia <a href="/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform/">receiving a major investment from Vista Equity Partners</a>, and Episerver recently <a href="/episerver-to-acquire-optimizely-the-worlds-leading-experience-optimization-platform/">announcing</a> its plans to acquire Optimizely. 
In a fierce race to acquire customers and compete against commoditization, leading platforms are relying on M&amp;A and outside equity to grow their market value. Leading enterprise platforms – from CRM to email marketing – also appear to be consolidating, offering more all-in-one solutions in a monolithic manner. MailChimp, ConstantContact, and <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a> are just a few platforms that are now offering digital marketing, CMS, and other capabilities all in one place.
With this recent announcement, it appears Siteimprove is the latest player to enter the investment game in a world gone digital.
<h3 id="about">About</h3>
<a href="https://siteimprove.com/">Siteimprove</a> offers the world's most comprehensive cloud-based Digital Presence Optimization (DPO) software. The Siteimprove Intelligence Platform provides eye-opening insights that empower more than 7,500 teams to create higher quality content, drive better traffic, measure digital performance, and work towards regulatory compliance – all from one place. They also offer best-in-class technical support, academy courses, services, and technology integrations.

Nordic Capital Invests In Siteimprove, Plans International Expansion and Development

The principle of “think global, act local” has been used in a wide variety of contexts, from tackling environmental issues to managing business strategies. At its core is a simple, perhaps even algorithmic idea: that solving big problems requires an understanding of the smaller components.There’s no question that we live in a global economy – one where international companies are thinking across time zones and driving supply chains that stretch across our planet. While digital transformation has made our world more accessible, websites have struggled to provide a truly localized language experience.Translation: we want to think global, but often miss the local.That’s where Weglot comes in. The France-based translation solution is providing a dynamic alternative to the deprecated (but now resurrected) Google Translate, and elevating the role of localization. With over a hundred languages and a bevy of backend features, this easy-to-use service will have you saying “thank you” (or merci, gracias, dankie) in no time.In this review, we’ll explore Weglot, dive into its pros and cons, and touch on some of the CMS and eCommerce plugins available on the market. But let's start with some of the foundational concepts that impact website translation – and how Weglot is answering these challenges.<h3>The Value of Website Translation</h3>It goes without saying that English has become a global language for many applications, particularly in business and technology. But it’s simply not enough to have your website content available in a single language. Again, this is part of the charter to “act local” even if you’re connecting or selling on a global scale.Take eCommerce as an example. If the details for a product are in a language you don’t understand, are you more inclined to buy it… or seek out another source?The fact is, if you can’t communicate with your customers, you’ll be losing out on sales. With so many diverse languages being spoken across the globe – or even across the street – it’s clear that translation is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity.Here are a few more reasons why you should add translation to your website:<ul><li>Attract new customers: Simply put, a multilingual website can help you reach a broader audience. While most content online is written in English, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/262946/share-of-the-most-common-languages-on-the-internet/">only 25% of internet users are native English speakers</a>. By adding more languages to your website, you’ll reach a larger segment of customers both in new regions and within your own. As an example, Spanish is the second most spoken language in the U.S. – so by going multilingual, you could expand your reach both domestically and internationally.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/weglot-website-audience-stats-per-language.png" />Source: Statista<ul><li>Increase sales: As noted above, people are more likely to buy products when they’re presented in their own language. When you provide a translation for your customers, you’ll make it easier for them to search and find the products or content they’re looking for. You’ll also build trust and enhance loyalty.</li><li>Reduce bounce rates and increase conversions: According to CSA, 72.1% of users spend all their time on websites that are in their own language – and <a target="_blank" href="https://csa-research.com/More/Media/Press-Releases/ArticleID/31/Survey-of-3-000-Online-Shoppers-Across-10-Countries-Finds-that-60-Rarely-or-Never-Buy-from-English-only-Websites">60% of people never buy from English-only websites</a>. Based on these stats alone, it’s clear that your website visitors are less inclined to bounce – and more inclined to convert – if they have access to their own language.</li><li>Improve SEO: In almost every case, Search is what brings people to your website. With a multilingual SEO, your website will be indexable and optimized in multiple languages. And if your competitors aren’t offering translated content, you have even more of an advantage from a search perspective.</li></ul><h3>What about Google Translate?</h3>Historically, there have been two options for translating websites in multiple languages: build and maintain separate websites, or add a translation tool like Google Translate.While the former solution provides significant manual control over the frontend experience, it also requires more management. This might be OK if your products are markedly different depending on the region or country – or if you’re maintaining only two languages. But what about 50? And how do you track hundreds of changes across different dialects without losing control?For this reason, many companies have relied on Google Translate to provide a quick, easy, and free solution for translating content at the browser layer. While Google Translate features a wide range of language options, there’s no manual control over the translation itself. Further, the rendering on a webpage is clumsy at best, making the frontend expression less desirable.To confuse the matter, Google deprecated their Translate service in early 2019, meaning it was no longer available for new applications. With no sunset date in sight, companies were scrambling to find an alternative solution. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-translate-widget-is-free-again-for-some-websites-to-use/370104/#close">But according to Search Engine Journal</a>, Google is resuming support as of May 2020 in an effort to support the global response to COVID-19.<h3>The difference between translation and localization</h3>While translation typically refers to the automated process of converting text on a website or webpage (like Google Translate), localization is the ability to adapt your website’s content to a specific region through language, design, and even cultural elements.Localization can go much further than altering the dynamic text on your website’s frontend. In a truly localized application, the entire customer experience is geared to a user’s regional and linguistic preferences. That might include landing pages, emails, logo graphics – multiple dimensions of their journey.Obviously, automating all of these components requires varying degrees of human support. For that reason, translation serves as the bedrock, and companies can elect to further enhance their localization posture as desired. But the more localized you can get, the more relevant and compelling the experience.<h3>What is Weglot?</h3>Weglot is a platform-independent website translation tool that helps users and organizations transform their websites into multilingual experiences. Weglot finally delivers the best of both worlds, allowing you to have both manual and automatic states for your translations.Easy to use and quick to install, Weglot is designed to work with almost any kind of content management system (CMS) or website. It’s also unique in that it provides professional translation and multilingual SEO services as part of their offerings.<h3>Features</h3>Here are some of the top features you get with Weglot:<ul><li>Quick installation: Weglot is compatible with all CMS and website technologies. All you need to do is install the plugin to your website and configure it all with no code.</li><li>100+ languages: Weglot features one of the most robust libraries of language translations.</li><li>Team collaboration: Invite your team members and collaborate on translations together inside Weglot.</li><li>Context Editor: When translating a page, you need to see where the content resides and what kind of content it is (e.g. title or text). Weglot’s context editor allows you to translate inside an editor and see the website design and structure.</li><li>Automatic, manual, and human translation: In addition to rapid, automatic translation, you can edit translations manually. If you need help or additional bandwidth, you can order professional translation services and get the translated content in 48 hours.</li><li>Visitor auto-redirection: Weglot can detect a user’s language and redirect them to feature content in their language – automatically.</li><li>Localized all along the way: Weglot can translate everything from your landing page to the e-mail confirmation in your customers’ language, providing a deeper level of localization.</li><li>Dedicated customer service: Problems? Weglot offers world-class customer support via email.</li></ul><h3>Optimized SEO</h3>As we mentioned before, SEO is crucial to driving visitors to your website. With Weglot, you can optimize your SEO across your translations and improve your search performance. Here’s how:<ul><li>Create a unique URL for each version of your page. For example, with a Spanish version of your pages, you will have an “/es/” subdirectory.</li></ul><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/kjC8q74LcJtKtkzYNEqNexSnTX4xvyFW3zAXwF6yfVMQueY-be6UAYAKkTeqIgNIO1c5ZP2oT-m1aCS2BfYr0ab5RKe_nQkn4FkQIu6nBaMxvko_h3Kks1awOUcvP34ffp7u6vsPlVTShnaGqw" /><ul><li>Adding hreflangs in your source code. These tags let Google know you have different versions of the same page and favor indexing of these pages.</li></ul><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/weglot-hreflang-attributes.png" /><ul><li>Have your content translated into the source code and not just dynamically. Weglot translates the content on the server side so your content is translated in your source code – not at the browser layer.</li><li>Detect and translate SEO tags. For example, here are two websites in English and Kazakh:</li></ul><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/vkJycrQRCjUJU2z7YsR5zP6rg-jtWjiXffKj1WNc3DQXqJmogDfaSBW0b2I46ylirY1s-Iuqomv9zT6laPcskgtXGRSFRX4ENrDEmsu2aqa5vfXxWTXT1jdqByQNj1BCoxdszig4VXy1IG0K7A" /><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_BQHkMVhzi8K_SWuOXsgbDkPfm1LsUKD5c-xXZkUh6PLrkHdy_nFSnVvio2Vs3fNH0Dcr7IOtIlOqFFHtZn8nur40WqlU0_qtX-d3I3hxM9lkTPSheNstpuLV65mzjTiRe_KNNiETf5y7kiTZg" /><h3>How to add Weglot to your website or CMS</h3>Integrating Weglot is very easy – and it doesn’t even require touching any code. All you have to do is install the plugin and configure Weglot to start translating.When you install the app, you’ll get an API key from your Weglot account. Copy paste the API key in your CMS and you’re good to go:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/how-to-add-weglot-to-your-website-or-cms.png" /><h3>Pricing</h3><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/weglot-princing.png" />With Weglot, pricing is generally based on how many languages you want to offer, and the number of words you need translated. Pretty simple to understand, and very easy to upgrade in the future.It’s worth noting that Weglot offers a free plan that translates up to 2000 words for one language. Not bad if you have a very small site with a single additional language.Weglot offers monthly and annual pricing plans. With the annual, you get an extra 2 months of free translation, which is a nice bonus. Each monthly plan offers a 10-day free trial, and there are 5 tiers:<ul><li>Starter: € 9.90 / month for 1 translated language and up to 10,000 words</li><li>Business: € 19 / month for 3 translated languages and up to 50,000 words</li><li>Pro: € 49 / month for 5 translated languages and up to 200,000 words</li><li>Advanced: € 199 / month for 10 translated languages and up to 1,000,000 words</li><li>Enterprise: € 499 / month for unlimited translated languages. The word limit is not listed on the website but you can contact Weglot to learn more about your custom translation needs.</li></ul>You can sign up for a trial for <a target="_blank" href="https://dashboard.weglot.com/register?fp_ref=solodev">Weglot</a> here.<h3>Final Thoughts</h3>There’s no question that Weglot is one of the most practical, user-friendly translation solutions on the market today. It supports 100+ languages with automatic, manual, and professional translation capabilities. It’s incredibly easy to install on both websites and in CMS, and it’s currently available as a plugin for platforms such as <a target="_blank" href="https://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.shopify.com/">Shopify</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wix.com/">Wix</a>.Like any software, there’s always room for improvement. Weglot's translations can sometimes be a bit fickle when it comes to dynamic content – specifically anything that loads via Javascript. iFrames can also be a little difficult to troubleshoot, and there seems to be a lag time of a day or two before you can manually override a translation. The good news is that their support is incredibly responsive.When it comes to pricing, Weglot can get a little pricey for websites with lots of pages. For an enterprise, this is more than manageable. But for mid-tier sites going from free Google Translate, there could be some sticker shock.That said, it might just be worth every penny. Or centavo.<h3>About Weglot</h3><a target="_blank" href="https://weglot.com/">Weglot</a> is a SaaS tech start-up that helps businesses turn their websites multilingual. They offer a fast, simple and user-friendly way to translate and display your translations without bothering your developers.

Review: Weglot brings powerful translation for multilingual websites and CMS

When it comes to SEO, there are a number of tools that can help improve your website’s performance. And that’s the problem: you often need multiple resources to manage a comprehensive SEO strategy, and few platforms offer complete solution with the right mix of features.
While Siteimprove has built a strong reputation around their industry-leading <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/accessibility/">accessibility scanning and monitoring solution</a>, their SEO platform boasts some powerful enterprise features for enhancing search while simplifying the overall management.
We took a fresh look at Siteimprove SEO to see what gives it an edge – and how their all-in-one platform can help power your search and Digital Presence Optimization (DPO) strategies.
<h3 id="the-impact-of-covid-19-on-seo">The Impact of COVID-19 on SEO</h3>
The Coronavirus pandemic has unquestionably changed the way we live. But it’s also dramatically elevated the value of SEO.
With more people working from home, streaming video content, and ordering goods online, internet usage has increased exponentially. While businesses have begun to reopen in most places, the effects of COVID-19 have had a profound and lasting impact on digital experience.
From events to food service to hospitality, almost every industry has been forced to transform their operations. As businesses continue to become more reliant on digital strategies, SEO is playing an even bigger role for driving leads and competing online.
<h3 id="seo-made-simple">SEO Made Simple</h3>
Digital professionals already know how challenging it is to manage a successful SEO strategy. With dozens of tools flooding the already overloaded <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/">MarTech landscape</a> – from analytics to keyword research to linking – the choices can feel overwhelming.
Siteimprove SEO helps cut through this complexity by combining the most essential tools in one place and integrating their capabilities. This makes the SEO job less cumbersome while providing more actionable insight and value.
We’ve already mentioned Siteimprove’s best-of-breed accessibility platform. These features go hand-in-hand with SEO, as accessibility is built on structured website tagging and labeling. Search engines love these components, so fixing your accessibility means improving your SEO. It’s relatively easy to add Siteimprove’s accessibility scanning and monitoring to help flag ADA compliance violations.
<h3 id="an-all-in-one-platform-for-optimizing-search">An All-in-One Platform for Optimizing Search</h3>
While no platform can bring everything together in one place, Siteimprove gets pretty close. Here are some key features worth noting:
On-Page Diagnostics 
Siteimprove incorporates 66 unique SEO checks, including scans for missing meta descriptions, spelling mistakes, broken links, poor readability, and links to unsafe domains. Based on all the checkpoints, it then calculates your SEO score, measured on a scale of 0-100.
There are four separate categories: Technical, Content, User Experience, and Mobile Standards. Each category gets its own score with their total making up the overall score. The scoring system allows users to easily identify what needs to be improved and where they should direct their efforts. This makes managing and understanding your SEO much easier. The following ranges give an indication of how your website is doing:
- Red: 0-49 (poor)
- Orange: 50-89 (average)
- Green: 90-100 (good)
A score of 90+ will place your website in the top 5% of all websites, according to Google’s performance metrics. Making your score higher will improve your SEO, user engagement, and user experience – thus increasing conversions.
Keyword insights 
The Keyword insights feature allows for advanced keyword discovery and monitoring. Through a direct integration of <a href="https://search.google.com/search-console/about">Google’s Search console</a>, Siteimprove SEO helps you learn how Google’s search engine sees your website and which queries make your website appear in search results. With Keyword Insights, you can identify keywords that drive traffic to your website and see their search volume, estimated traffic, competition level, and even a specific keyword’s potential ranked from low to high.
Search Engine Analytics 
With Siteimprove, you can see where your visitors are coming from and how engaged they are with your content. Search Engine Analytics provides statistics on visitors from search engine referrals, their county, and even the devices they use. With all the data at your fingertips, you can enhance your digital strategies and focus your campaigns based on incredibly useful metrics.
Backlink checks 
Backlinks are hyperlinks that live on other websites that lead back to your website. Backlinks are an important part of any SEO strategy, as search engines use backlinks as an indicator of your domain authority (essentially how popular or important your website is). With backlink checks and analysis, you can see which sites are publishing links back to you, and identify links that boost your ranking or even put it at risk.
Duplicate Content Finder 
Duplicate content is a problem almost every web or content manager faces. Google and other search engines work hard to index pages with distinct information, and duplicated blocks of content can be seen as manipulating SEO to win more traffic. Even if duplicate content includes things like printer-only versions of pages, the search engines can’t always tell which version to display. Consequently, your page may rank lower or even be excluded from search results. While canonical tags can be used to combat this, it’s good to avoid the problem in the first place.
With Siteimprove, you can search and identify duplicate content, compare the percentage of similarity between pages, and provide page view statistics. Armed with this data, you can take action to remove or properly tag your duplicate content and improve your rankings.
Content Optimization 
With Siteimprove, you can map specific keywords to where they should appear in your content. You can even get recommendations on how to optimize your overall content for keywords.
Accessibility 
As we already mentioned, Siteimprove is well-regarded for their accessibility solutions. But improving your SEO can help support your overall accessibility – and adding Siteimprove’s scanning and monitoring tools can help give you a clean bill of health around violations.
Siteimprove’s scanning and monitoring tools check your website for a range of accessibility issues and compile scoring based on WCAG 2.0 ratings for A, AA, or AAA standards. If you have a big site, you can use automated accessibility checks to simultaneously test hundreds of pages. You can then generate actionable reports that allow you to remediate any issues and track your improvements for regulatory or governance requirements.
<a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/accessibility/">Click here</a>  to learn more about Siteimprove’s accessibility solutions.
<h3 id="integration-with-cms-platforms">Integration with CMS Platforms</h3>
Siteimprove works seamlessly with most content management systems. It offers a set of pre-built plugins for specific platforms, as well as integrations developed in collaboration with CMS vendors. There are also a number of community plugins that have been developed and supported by third parties. Siteimprove does feature an <a href="https://api.siteimprove.com/v2/documentation">API spec with complete documentation</a> for building custom integrations.
<h3 id="pricing">Pricing</h3>
Along with their suite of SEO tools, Siteimprove offers multiple enterprise products through a subscription-based model. While they don’t offer pricing on their website, you can contact their sales team to develop a custom quote around your organization’s needs and goals.
You can also get a free demo of the software <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/request-a-demo/">https://siteimprove.com/en-us/request-a-demo/</a>
<h3 id="about-siteimprove">About Siteimprove</h3>
Siteimprove offers the world's most comprehensive cloud-based Digital Presence Optimization (DPO) software. The Siteimprove Intelligence Platform provides eye-opening insights that empower more than 7,500 teams to create higher quality content, drive better traffic, measure digital performance, and work towards regulatory compliance—all from one place. We are also proud to offer best-in-class technical support, academy courses, services, and technology integrations.

Siteimprove SEO Provides All-In-One Capabilities for Enhancing Search Performance

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

Anyone who runs a website knows the importance of search engine optimization (SEO). In fact, most site owners spend quite a large portion of their time and budget on SEO. While there is no doubt that SEO is important, there is another type of search that really shouldn’t be neglected. That is on-page search. Just about all sites today will have an on-site search function that allows users to quickly search for something that they know is on the page, but they aren’t sure where (and any sites that don’t have this functionality should really implement it right away).
On-page search is a key tool that allows visitors to remain on the site longer, which can build brand awareness, drive more sales, get more sign-ups, and even help to improve search rankings on Google. It also leads to a greater overall visitor experience since they won’t get frustrated looking for something they need. There are additional proven benefits of high-quality search functions, including <a href="https://www.invespcro.com/blog/six-tips-to-optimize-your-websites-internal-search-function/">these</a>:
<ul>
<li>About 50% of eCommerce Visitors Say they Prefer Using On-Page Search to Find Products</li>
<li>Total Order Value Rises when Visitors Use On-Page Search</li>
<li>Visitors who Leave a Site to Search for Information they Need Often Never Return</li>
<li>Customers Convert 4 Times More Often when they Use Native Search Functions</li>
</ul>
There is really no doubt that having an on-page search function is critical for the success of any website. Finding and installing a simple on-page search function is an important first step, but there are additional things that webmasters can do to improve the effectiveness of this tool.
<h3>Make it Easy to Find</h3>
When choosing the location on your page where the search bar should appear, you will have several basic options. The first option is to put it in the upper right corner, which has become the standard for websites today. This is familiar for visitors, so they aren’t likely to have to spend much time looking for it. The other option is to make it a much larger and more conspicuous search bar that is more toward the middle of the page. This will really help it to stand out and encourage it to be used by visitors. The second option is more popular on eCommerce sites such as Amazon.
With either option, you want to make sure the search function is extremely easy to see. It should not be in the upper right, but buried in a menu, for example. If you don’t have a search box that is always available, it should be quickly accessible by clicking on a magnifying glass such as you will find here on CMSCritic:
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/image-10.png" alt="CMS Critic Magnifying glass icon" /></figure>
<h3>Implement Auto-Complete Functionality</h3>
Auto-complete is great feature for traditional search, and it can be just as effective on your page. As visitors are typing in their search query, this function will actively attempt to figure out what it is they are going to search for. Since normal websites don’t have the millions of results that you’ll find on Google, auto-complete can often recommend exactly what people are searching for after just a few letters.
Another great perk of the auto-complete feature is that it can help to put additional ideas into the minds of visitors. They may see something in the search recommendations that they weren’t looking for previously, but now their interest has been peaked. These types of experiences are great for visitors, and will keep them on your site even longer. You can see an example of the auto-complete feature from CMS Critic here:
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/image-7.png" alt="CMS Critic Auto Complete Features" /></figure>
<h3>Bring Customers to the Page They Want</h3>
Traditional search engines (and most on-page search engines) bring people to a results page after each search. With Google, this page will have millions of results to choose from. For on-page search options, there will be far fewer. When a customer searches for something that will return just one result (such as a model number, part number, or article title) have the search function bring them directly to that page rather than a results page. This will eliminate one click for the visitor, which slightly improves their experience. It is this type of small, but often noticeable, customer experience improvements that can really help to build brand loyalty.
<h3>Finding the Right On-Page Search</h3>
It is clear that a good on-page search tool will bring any site a lot of great benefits. Whether you are running a blog, a news site, an eCommerce platform, or any other type of website, you should consider adding this feature. Finding the right on-page search tool for your site will take some research and will be based largely on what type of CMS you are using. Once installed and configured, however, you’ll enjoy the benefits for years to come.

Keep Customers on Your Site with Effective On-Page Search

michael-levanduski

Call Tracking + AI 

Call Tracking + AI that Turns Calls into Leads

Explore a wide range of informative articles on seo, insights, and industry updates. Stay informed and ahead of the curve with our diverse collection of news and posts covering the latest trends and developments in the industry

News

The global commerce platform

Power your CMS on AWS

Call Tracking + AI that Turns Calls into Leads