Welcome to our weekly roundup of the top 10 digital marketing articles of the week! In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, staying up to date with the latest trends, tactics, and strategies is crucial to success. Whether you’re a seasoned digital marketer or just getting started, our weekly roundup is sure to provide you with valuable insights and practical tips to help you stay ahead of the game.
Content Marketing
The Art of Crafting Content That Won’t Give Audiences the AI Ick
Robert Rose emphasizes the importance of creating emotionally resonant, human-centered content to avoid the disconnection audiences often feel with AI-generated material. He advocates for intentional storytelling, originality, and a clear editorial voice to ensure content feels authentic and meaningful.
The Benefits of Adding Infographics to Your Blog Posts
Using infographics in blog posts can significantly enhance comprehension, engagement, and shareability—especially for complex topics, explains Lauren Basiura. She recommends keeping visuals simple, mobile-optimized, and SEO-friendly, while also repurposing them across other formats like presentations, newsletters, and social posts to extend their impact.
SEO
The Biggest Lessons I Learned From the HCU So Far
In her post, Carolyn Holzman explores the impact of Google’s Helpful Content Update, highlighting how even well-meaning, smaller sites saw traffic drops due to misalignment with Google’s evolving quality standards. She emphasizes that recovery depends on improving or removing low-value content and maintaining a consistent focus on creating genuinely helpful, user-first pages.
What Is Alt Text? Why It Matters & How to Write It
Alt text plays a crucial role in both accessibility and SEO, explains Rachel Handley, who recommends writing concise, descriptive image tags under 125 characters. She suggests avoiding keyword stuffing, skipping redundant phrases like “image of,” and using tools like Semrush Site Audit and AI features to efficiently optimize image attributes at scale.
Mid-year SEO checkup: What’s working, what’s not?
Edwin Toonen, in Yoast’s mid-year SEO checkup, highlights the importance of reviewing traffic trends, keyword performance, and SERP visibility since the start of the year. He encourages updating outdated content, leveraging video and structured data, and maintaining strong technical SEO to stay aligned with evolving search trends.
Social Media
Social media KPIs every marketer should be tracking
Hannah Macready defines social media KPIs as data-driven metrics tied to specific business goals and explains how to set SMART targets (e.g., increase click-throughs by XX% in six months). She provides a framework for selecting relevant KPIs—like reach for awareness, engagement for interaction, and response time for customer service—and emphasizes using regular tracking, benchmarking, and analytics tools to refine your strategy.
Data Shows Best Content Format on Social Platforms in 2025: Millions of Posts Analyzed
Kirsti Lang’s data-driven analysis reveals that the most effective content format on social platforms varies by network—video dominates on TikTok and LinkedIn, while carousels, images, and text each shine in different contexts. By studying millions of posts across Instagram, Facebook, X, Threads, and more, she emphasizes tailoring your strategy to platform-specific trends rather than relying on one-size-fits-all content
Email Marketing
Email marketing costs: What to expect and how to budget smarter
Email marketing can be cost-effective—but as Artem Vasin points out, the true expense comes from the combined cost of tools (ESP fees, design editors), skilled personnel (marketers, copywriters, designers), and essential processes like QA and localization. He breaks down how these costs scale with business size and warns against common oversights—such as underinvesting in segmentation, testing, and rendering checks—that can inflate budgets and hamper ROI.
100 Back-to-School Email Subject Lines That Boost Sales
Samantha Bansil highlights that back-to-school is one of the most crucial retail seasons—spanning mid‑July to mid‑September—and emphasizes launching campaigns early with tailored offers for families, students, and teachers. She recommends strategies like bundling essentials, digital and social promotions, and creating targeted email newsletters and influencer content to boost engagement and sales.
Link Building
How to Find Backlinks to Your Site + Tips for More Backlinks
Vlado Pavlik explains how to uncover valuable backlinks by combining native tools like Google Search Console, Semrush’s Backlink Analytics (which taps into a database of 43 trillion links), and Bing Webmaster Tools. He outlines three smart strategies—competitor link-gap analysis, broken-link replacement, and recovering lost backlinks—to help you identify link opportunities and streamline outreach.
