How to Choose a GEO Partner
GEO gets sold as a bolt-on, and it isn't one. One question tells you whether a partner is being straight with you, plus four more to ask and what an honest answer sounds like.
SEO, GEO & AEO Insights
Thinking out loud on search,
AI visibility, and what's actually changing.
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.
Recent
Latest from the notebook.
Why Do the Same Marketing Problems Keep Coming Back?
A fix that keeps coming back isn't a task. It's a standing cost with no owner, and no invoice shows it. Three stories from inside the vendor seat, including one where I built a tool to hide a problem instead of solving it.
How Much Traffic Does AI Search Send? Why the Benchmarks Don't Agree
Three studies measured AI referral traffic and got 0.2%, 0.32%, and 1.08%. None of them is wrong, they measured different populations, and a slice of the traffic never gets labeled AI at all. Why no benchmark exists, and what to track instead.
Do AI Watermarks Hurt Your SEO? What Claude's Change Means
Claude now watermarks everything it writes, and the panic got ahead of the facts. Google judges content "no matter how it's created," the one study saying otherwise measured rankings three days after publishing, and its authors admit they never isolated the watermark.
Charging AI Bots: What Cloudflare and AWS Changed
Cloudflare and AWS now let site owners charge or block AI crawlers with the same HTTP 402 response. For a small business the real risk isn't the toll, it's dropping out of AI answers through a default nobody chose.
Topical Authority in AI Search: Why It Sticks
A new analysis of more than 50,000 brands shows AI answers pick topic owners, and the spot holds about 90 percent of the time month over month. Most topics still have no owner. Where to focus before the fields settle.
Is AI Content Hurting Your Google Rankings?
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.
Do Google AI Overviews Reduce Clicks to Your Site?
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.
AI Citations Have a Shelf Life: Why Getting Cited Once Isn't the Win
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.
What Is a Technical SEO Audit? What It Checks and What It Finds
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.
Is AI Search Sending You Ready Buyers? Can Your Site Close?
My lean: AI search sends visitors who've done more of their deciding. If your page is built to convince instead of close, you add friction for that buyer. What a failing page looks like, and how to fix it.
Website Migration SEO: The Complete Guide
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.
How Much Does SEO Cost? Why No Flat Price Exists
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.
Generative Engine Optimization: How to Show Up in AI Search
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.
Is Your Site Invisible to AI Search? How to Tell and Fix It
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.
How to Know If Your SEO Is Actually Working
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.
Lost Rankings After a Website Redesign? What Went Wrong
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.
SEO Consultant in Austin: How to Choose the Right One
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.
Do You Need an SEO Consultant? Consultant vs Agency vs In-House
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.
What Is EntityMap? A New AI Search Standard Explained
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.
Why Your Agency Can't Tell You What's Actually Working
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.
When ChatGPT Gets Your Business Wrong: Entity Confusion in AI Search
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.
Schema Cannibalization: When Your Site Confuses Google About Itself
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.
Why New Websites Don't Show Up in Search: Six Patterns I See on Every Audit
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 and AI Citations: What B2B Brands Need to Know
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.
How to Migrate a Website Without Losing Your Search Rankings
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.
Why Adding Schema Shouldn't Be a Dev Project Every Time
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.
Why Is Google Deindexing Pages?
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.
What Is Keyword Cannibalization?
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 Is a 301 Redirect?
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.
What Are Orphan Pages?
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.
What Is llms.txt, and Do You Actually Need It?
No major AI platform has committed to using llms.txt, and Google confirmed it doesn't read the file. Here's what it does, and why I still keep one.
Want a topic covered?
Tell me what's on your mind.
If there's a question you keep hitting about SEO, AI visibility, or content strategy, send it over. Good questions usually become good posts.
Get in Touch