Kick Point Playbook gives you the digital marketing skills you need to grow—whether you want to land more clients, level up your career, or make smarter marketing decisions. Get bi-weekly insights on analytics, SEO, and reporting, curated by Dana DiTomaso and her team. Each issue is packed with expert tips, must-read articles, and free resources like templates and checklists—all designed to help you take action and see real results.
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🤔 Are You Still Doing This in SEO?
Published 4 months ago • 6 min read
👋 9 SEO Tactics to Say Goodbye to in 2025
If you want to set yourself up for success in 2025, it's time to let go of these strategies and focus on what actually moves the needle.
#1. Stop Chasing SEO Trends Just for the Sake of It SEO should tie into business goals—not just be about driving any traffic. If these trends aren’t helping conversions, sales, or brand visibility where it matters, it’s time to focus on what you know works.
#2. Rankings & Traffic ≠ Success Sure, lots of traffic feels great, but if that traffic isn’t converting? It’s just a vanity metric. Focus on attracting the right audience, not just more visitors.
#3. Quality Over Quantity, Always More blog posts, backlinks, and citations won’t help if they aren’t valuable. Stop pumping out content for the sake of it—focus on relevance, depth, and usefulness.
#4. AI Can Help, But Don’t Let It Run the Show AI is great for efficiency, but blindly relying on it for everything (content, research, strategy) can backfire. Use it to enhance your work, not replace thoughtful execution.
#5. Check Your Branded Search Results When was the last time you Googled your brand? Are you listed on important review sites? Do you have outdated or negative results showing up? Regularly audit your branded SERPs—because your customers are definitely looking.
#6. SEO Isn’t Just About Google Diversify your presence—think YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Amazon, and other platforms where your audience hangs out. Google is just one piece of the puzzle.
#7. Images & Videos Matter More Than Ever Google is prioritizing multimedia in search results. Real images and videos (not AI-generated ones) help boost engagement and visibility. If you’re ignoring visual SEO, you’re missing out.
#8. Base Decisions on Data, Not Gut Feelings Your experience matters, but don’t make SEO decisions based only on opinion. Look at case studies, analyze your own data, and learn from others in your industry.
#9. Spammy Shortcuts Aren’t Worth It If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Chasing “quick win” SEO hacks might help in the short term, but they often lead to penalties or wasted effort. Stick to sustainable strategies.
SEO isn’t about gaming the system—it’s about understanding your audience, their intent, and how search engines surface the best results. Let’s refine our approach and say goodbye to tactics that just don’t serve us anymore.
WEBINAR
SEO for Brand Visibility & Recognition
Don’t miss expert guidance from Aleyda Solis as she unpacks why brand visibility is essential for SEO success in 2025. In this webinar, you will:
Gain insights on why branding matters more now than ever.
Get practical steps to align your brand across platforms.
Learn how to improve your organization's structured data.
Ready to get the visibility and recognition your brand deserves?
Running a search campaign on Google Ads? By default, Google includes search partners in your search campaigns (under the campaign settings) unless you uncheck it.
Make sure you check to see how search partners are performing! If the traffic isn't converting you can disable this feature. At the campaign level select Segment > Network (with search partners). This will show you a breakdown of how much you’re spending on Google search vs search partner sites.
“On search partners sites, your ads and listings can appear on search results pages, site directory pages, parked domains, or other pages related to a person's search.” - Source
Review the data in the report, while clicks from search partners are typically cheaper, they are also lower quality. Disable the feature and stop wasting your budget if you aren't converting the traffic.
SEO pro Crystal Carter joined Dana on a webinar to break down why generative search matters for brand visibility—and what you can do to future-proof your SEO.
Crystal was full of quotable moments and shared a ton of actionable advice. One of our favorite takeaways? Optimizing for LLM crawl intent. Since large language models (LLMs) interpret content differently from traditional search engines, you’ll need to tweak your strategy. Here’s where to start:
Prioritize high-value pages. These will vary by business, but typically include your home, about, and contact pages.
Block unnecessary pages. Keep robots focused on your most important content by limiting what they crawl.
Strengthen your entities. Make sure your brand is linked to well-defined entities—LLMs rely on sources like Wikipedia, schema, and backlinks.
Monitor and correct misinformation. Keep an eye on how LLMs present your brand and provide feedback when needed.
Create custom branded GPTs. Tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT let you build custom pages and GPTs, boosting your brand’s presence in AI-driven searches.
Don’t forget—traditional SEO optimization still plays a big role. A strong search presence lays the foundation for better visibility in LLMs.
📅 Want to Get More Done Without Burnout? Try This Calendar System
Ross Hudgens shares how designing his “ideal calendar” helped him eliminate distractions, cut down on context switching, and make time for what truly matters. With strategies like color-coding, prioritizing non-work activities, and automating scheduling, this system can significantly improve work-life balance.
🍪 Cookie Consent Management: How to Verify When Your GA4 Tag Actually Is Sent
Are you wondering if your GA4 tag is actually firing when it should? Corina Burri breaks down how to inspect GA4 events using browser dev tools, GTM’s preview mode, and the GA4 DebugView. Whether you’re troubleshooting or just double-checking your setup, this guide walks you through step-by-step.
📍 Added a Service Page to Your Site? Now Do These 30 Things to Help Grab More Customers
Publishing a new service page is just the beginning—now it’s time to make sure it actually gets found. Phil Rozek shares 30 essential steps to optimize your page for local search, from internal linking to GBP integration.
🛠️ Mastering Data Loading in BigQuery Using Dataform
When handling incremental data in BigQuery, choosing the right table update method is key. Measurelab breaks down the four main strategies—truncate, load, append, and insert—explaining when to use each one to keep your data clean, efficient and up to date.
📢 How to Measure Brand Awareness in 2025 (AKA the Year of the Brand)
When handling incremental data in BigQuery, choosing the right table update method is key. Measurelab breaks down the four main strategies—truncate, load, append, and insert—explaining when to use each one to keep your data clean, efficient, and up to date.
🆓 Google’s New SEO Dashboard: GA4 + Search Console in One Report
If you're just getting started with Looker Studio, check out this free dashboard from Google. It blends together GA4 and Google Search Console data, and you can make your own copy and start trying out different ways to display your data! H/T to Chris Long's LinkedIn post sharing insights on this new resource.
📉 Google AIO Impact - SEO & PPC CTRs at All Time Low
AI Overviews (AIOs) are shaking up search, with both organic and paid click-through rates hitting record lows. But it’s not all bad news—Tracy McDonald’s latest analysis shows that queries without AIOs actually saw an increase in organic CTR. Plus, if your brand owns the AIO, the CTR for both organic and paid results gets a boost.
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Sharpen your local SEO skills at LocalU's Global Virtual Conference. You'll get cutting-edge strategies, expert insights, and a live Q&A with each speaker.
Join Dana DiTomaso's session to learn how to make GA4 work for locally-focused businesses. Whether you're refining your approach or looking for fresh insights, this conference will equip you with the tools and knowledge to succeed. Don't miss out!
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Kick Point Playbook
Insights that fuel action. Learn, apply, and grow your marketing skills.
Kick Point Playbook gives you the digital marketing skills you need to grow—whether you want to land more clients, level up your career, or make smarter marketing decisions. Get bi-weekly insights on analytics, SEO, and reporting, curated by Dana DiTomaso and her team. Each issue is packed with expert tips, must-read articles, and free resources like templates and checklists—all designed to help you take action and see real results.
Hello Reader, Thank you for attending today’s webinar, Making the Move From Search Optimization to Answer Optimization with Wil Reynolds! If you missed the webinar or want to rewatch it, here’s the replay link → We had an incredible discussion about how the future of SEO is evolving beyond rankings—and why marketers should be focusing on where (and how) real answers are being delivered across AI, social, and search. Key takeaways: We’re in the answers business, not just the SEO business....
How to Verify Consent Signals Are Being Received Correctly in GA4 for Modeling Eligibility and GDPR Compliance You put a consent banner on your site. That’s great! But here's the problem... Just because your banner looks nice doesn't mean GA4 is actually respecting what your visitors choose. We see this mistake all the time during analytics audits. The banner is there, sure. But the data? Still flowing in before getting consent. Oops. Here's what you should check right now: Is data being sent...
GA4 Explained: The Essential Guide to Page Path, Page Location, and Other Page Data Page path versus page location versus page path + query string… if you find yourself getting tripped up by these GA4 dimensions and are stuck navigating messy reports, you’re not alone. Knowing which dimension to use can seriously improve your reporting! In our latest guide, Dana DiTomaso breaks down what each dimension actually tracks, when to use them, and how picking the right dimension makes all the...