Guides
Written from evidence, not from opinion.
What earns citations from AI assistants, and what quietly stopped working.Every claim names its source, including the ones that argue against features we ship.
All guides
"Near Me" in an Assistant World
"Near me" built the local map pack. AI assistants change local SEO: they name one business, and the criteria for being that name are different.
AI Search Cites Fewer Sources. Aim to Be One of Them.
AI search cites fewer sources per question, not 10 links. As results consolidate, being one of the few named beats ranking among many.
The FAQ Page Is Dead. The Answer Is the Page.
The FAQ page is outdated for SEO. A page is now expected to answer directly, so the answer is the page itself, not a separate list of questions.
Reputation Is the New Ranking Signal
What others say about you shapes what AI says about you. Reviews, mentions, and listings make brand reputation a ranking signal in AI search.
The Compounding Cost of AI Invisibility
The cost of poor AI visibility compounds: every answer that names a competitor hardens a default, and the price of waiting keeps rising.
AI Can't Recommend What It Can't Understand
AI recommends what it can describe with confidence. If what you do is fuzzy or buried, it hedges or skips you. Clarity is becoming a ranking factor.
Position One Is a Vanity Metric
Ranking first is turning into a vanity metric. When the answer sits above the links and the click is optional, position one certifies less than it used to.
Question-Based SEO: Why the Keyword Is No Longer the Unit
The unit of SEO is shifting from the keyword to the question. Question based SEO builds for whole intents, not keyword strings.
Writing Content for AI Search Is Still Writing for People
Writing content for AI search is not keyword stuffing. Machines now reward clear, unambiguous prose, which is what good writing already wanted.
Why AI Describes Your Business Wrong, and Whose Fault It Is
When AI describes your business wrong, it is rarely random. Thin or conflicting public signals are the cause, and that is a fixable problem.
Your SEO Audit Measures the Wrong Things
Most SEO audits still grade a fading search page. An AI era SEO audit asks three questions instead: can you be found, described correctly, and recommended.
The Agency's New Job: Governing SEO, Not Doing It
For an SEO agency in the age of AI, value shifts from doing the work by hand to governing what an assistant does across a whole portfolio.
Brand Is the New Backlink
Authority meant links for a decade. As AI answers questions directly, brand mentions and entity SEO decide whether models know you and get you right.
Zero-Click Was the Warning. Zero-Search Is Next
Zero click kept the search page. Zero search removes it: people ask an assistant and never open a results page. Plan discovery for a world with no page.
SEO Is Becoming a Governance Problem, Not a Content Problem
Once AI agents can edit your site, managing AI changes to your website matters more than producing content. SEO is becoming a governance problem.
When AI Answers the Question, Getting Cited Beats Ranking First
As AI assistants answer questions directly, getting cited matters more than your position on a results page. Watch citations, not rankings.
How AI Describes Your Brand: The One Sentence You Did Not Write
How AI describes your brand now does the work your homepage used to. Most owners have never read the sentence assistants hand to people who ask.
What AI Visibility Means, and How to Measure It
AI visibility comes down to three checkable things: can an assistant find you, describe you correctly, and recommend you. Here is how to measure each.
How to Switch SEO Plugins Without Losing Rankings (Dry-Run First)
A guide to switching SEO plugins safely: a preflight checklist, imports that show every change before it lands, and a two week verification plan.
Counting Keywords Does Not Help the Way It Used To. Here Is What AI Answers Reward.
Keyword density meters do not measure what search engines reward in 2026. Here is what AI answers cite, and a writing checklist that skips the scores.
16 Schema Types Google Stopped Showing (2023 to 2026), and What Still Works
A plain timeline of the schema types Google deprecated between 2023 and 2026, from FAQ to HowTo to the sitelinks search box, and what still works.
llms.txt Gets Zero Crawler Visits. We Ship It Anyway.
Across 180,000 logged AI bot hits, llms.txt got zero fetches, and Google says it does not read the file. Why we still ship the toggle, labeled experimental.
What It Means That Your AI Assistant Can Now Run Your WordPress SEO
Connect an AI assistant to your WordPress SEO and it can read and change titles and descriptions the way you would. Here is what that means for your site.
Reading is the cheap part
These guides argue for changes. The scan shows you which of them your own site needs.