A working set of notes on SEO, GEO, and AEO. Published when there's something worth saying, not on a schedule. No filler, no recycled takes.
AI content isn't penalized for being AI. The thin, scaled stuff is what gets dropped. What Google's 2026 core and spam updates actually target, what the data says about which AI content ranks, and how to check your own site in Search Console, with real numbers from ten accounts.
Yes, the independent data says AI Overviews reduce clicks, though it is more nuanced than the doom headlines. What Pew, Ahrefs, and Similarweb actually found, what Google claims, and the six moves that hold up.
Getting cited by AI once isn't the win. Citations decay in weeks, and 44% vanish after a single appearance. What makes a citation last, grounded in the latest half-life research, and how to keep your seat.
Good content and still not ranking? A technical SEO audit checks whether search engines and AI can crawl, index, and understand your site. What it checks, the issues it surfaces most, and where to fix each.
AI search sends visitors who've already decided. If your page is built to convince instead of close, you add friction to your best buyer. What changes, what a failing page looks like, and how to fix it.
The strategic guide to moving a site without losing rankings: the types of migration, the phases of a safe move, what tends to break and where to read about each, and what Google actually says about recovery.
SEO has no standard rate card. Why nobody can quote you a real price up front, what actually drives the number, how the pricing models work, and the questions to ask before you sign anything.
The complete guide to GEO and AEO: what they are, why showing up in AI search is still SEO, where AI Overviews and ChatGPT pull their answers, and the five levers that get your business cited.
Can ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews actually cite your business? How to run the check in Search Console, the indexing gate that decides it, and the fixes when you come up invisible.
The clearest sign SEO is working isn't rankings or total traffic. It's non-branded organic clicks trending up over 90 days. The metrics that matter, the vanity ones to ignore, and realistic timelines.
Traffic dropped after a redesign or migration? The real causes, grounded in Google's own documentation, how to tell which one hit you, and the honest part: most of it should have been handled before launch.
Does an Austin SEO consultant need to be local? An honest guide to what actually matters, when local SEO expertise counts, the red flags to watch for, and why being nearby is a bonus, not a requirement.
An honest comparison of the three ways to get SEO help: an independent consultant, an agency, or an in-house hire. What each model really costs, where each one falls short, and how to tell which fits your situation.
A new proposed open standard lets sites declare their entities to AI systems in a single entitymap.json file. What it does, what schema.org already covers, the four signals I'm watching for, and why I'm not recommending implementation yet.
If your agency ships ten changes a month and can't tell you which one moved the needle, that's not a strategy. The discipline they're skipping, the five questions to ask in your next review, and why most agencies will resist all of it.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews regularly confuse similar businesses, misattribute reviews, and cite a competitor's pricing as if it belonged to you. A 5-minute self-audit, and the fixes that actually hold.
When two pages on your site claim to be the same business, Google splits the traffic and conversions go with it. How to spot schema cannibalization, why canonical tags only do half the job, and what most agencies miss.
A brand new website that doesn't rank usually has six fixable patterns nobody flagged during the build. Heading hierarchy, schema, JavaScript-rendered HTML, duplicate URLs, orphan pages, and migrations that lost the old URLs. Here's what to look for and how to fix it.
LinkedIn is now the #2 most-cited domain in AI search, ahead of Wikipedia, YouTube, and every major news publisher. What that means for B2B content strategy, publishing cadence, and which voices in the company should be active on the platform.
A site migration only protects your rankings if someone has mapped every old URL to a new one before launch, validated those redirects after launch, and reconnected analytics, Search Console, and your sitemap. Skip any of those steps and you start losing equity the moment the new site goes live.
Schema markup should be a copy-paste job, not a developer ticket. How to set it up right, what to test, and what the validators won't tell you.
Google is pruning pages more aggressively in 2026. What "Discovered - currently not indexed" means, why it's happening, and how to stop it on your site.
Keyword cannibalization quietly kills rankings and invites Google to deindex your pages. What it is, why it happens, how to diagnose it, and how to actually fix it.
What a 301 redirect is, when you actually need one, the difference between 301 and 302, how to handle sitemaps after migration, and the redirect mistakes worth avoiding.
Not all orphan pages are bad, but accidental orphans quietly hurt SEO, GEO, and AEO. What they are, how they get created, why the sitemap does not fix them, and what to do with each one.
An honest take on the proposed llms.txt standard. When it is worth adding, when to skip it, and why it is not a substitute for SEO fundamentals.
If there's a question you keep hitting about SEO, AI visibility, or content strategy, send it over. Good questions usually become good posts.
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