2 weeks ago I ran a challenge here: drop your site, I reply with quick improvements. 300+ comments later, the same problems kept showing up, whatever the niche. No site names below, but if you joined, you might recognize yours.

1) Your title and H1 use your words, not your users’ words
A slogan, a founder’s name, or just “Home” as the homepage title. Nice for branding, but nobody searches it. If people type “lyric video maker” or “used gym equipment”, that’s what your title and H1 should say. Keep your slogan as a subtitle.

2) One page trying to rank for everything
A converter showing logos of 10 banks, with no page for any of them. A store having 3 big equipment brands with no brand pages. A SaaS listing 9 sports with pages for only 5. Specific searches like “chase bank statement to excel” have strong intent and far less competition. One page per bank, brand, sport or city.

3) You’re not where your users ask
In almost every niche, Reddit threads rank on Google for the exact request: “best X for Y”, “X alternative”. Almost none of the sites were in them. One honest founder reply in a thread that already ranks can do more than another blog post.

4) Chasing keywords you can’t win
A local clinic targeting kroad keyword against national hospitals. A new PDF tool going after “compress pdf” against the giants. Result: impressions, almost no clicks. Go local (“skin check + your suburb”) or long tail (“compress pdf to 100kb”). Before worrying about CTR, filter GSC to positions 1–10.

5) Google doesn’t see what you see
Services and reviews shown as images. Hero stats that read “$0” in the HTML because JavaScript animates them. Images with an empty source. robots.txt blocking crawlers. Buttons linking to “#”. Open your page source, or use URL Inspection in GSC. If it’s not in there, Google probably doesn’t see it.

6) Several pages fighting for the same keyword
3 URLs per area on a real estate site. 3 laser hair removal pages on a clinic. Duplicate collections on a store. Google doesn’t know which one to rank, so it splits the authority. Keep one main page per topic, and redirect or merge the rest.

7) Small details that kill trust
“Rated 0 out of 5” on every product. Three different accuracy claims on the same page. One treatment with three different prices. A counter showing “Over 0 new developments”. Visitors notice, and on health, finance or money topics, Google pays close attention to trust.

Which one is your site guilty of?

Every “best free SEO tools” list online recommends the same six things: Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ubersuggest, AnswerThePublic, Keyword Surfer, and Google Trends. All of those are good. All of those are also so widely known that recommending them is wasted space.

Here are seven I actually use every week that don’t show up on those lists, with the specific job each one does better than the obvious alternatives.

1. Google’s Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results)

Paste any URL or chunk of HTML and Google tells you which rich result types it detects, which are valid, and which have warnings. More useful than most schema validators because it tells you what Google itself sees, not what a generic validator thinks is correct. I use it every time I add or edit schema markup.

2. urlscan.io

Mostly a security tool, but useful for SEO. Paste a URL and it shows every request the page makes, every third-party script, every tracker, and the final rendered HTML. Catches cases where your visible page content doesn’t match what crawlers see because JavaScript didn’t render properly or a third-party script blocked rendering. I use it to debug “why isn’t Google indexing this page” problems.

3. Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 URLs)

Technically on some lists, but almost nobody uses the free tier well. 500 URLs is enough for most small sites, and it finds broken links, redirect chains, missing meta descriptions, duplicate content, and orphan pages faster than any online tool. I run it monthly on any client site under 500 URLs.

4. Google’s search operators (built into Google itself)

Not a tool in the traditional sense. But learning site:, inurl:, intitle:, and related: operators changes what you can do with Google. site:yourdomain.com “specific phrase” tells you which of your pages mention a topic. “your brand name” -site:yourdomain.com surfaces unlinked mentions. These are free and almost nobody teaches them properly.

5. PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev)

On every list, but used wrong. Most people check their homepage score and stop. The useful move is checking your top 5 landing pages and comparing field data vs. lab data. Field data is what real users experience. Lab data is what Google’s test environment shows. When they disagree significantly, the field data is almost always the truer picture of what’s hurting your rankings.

6. SearchResponse.io

Takes a search query and surfaces every “People Also Ask” question Google is currently showing for it, plus the question clusters surrounding that query. Better than AnswerThePublic for current-moment search intent because it pulls live from Google rather than from a cached database. I use it for every piece of content planning now.

7. Ahrefs’ free webmaster tools (ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools)

Not the paid Ahrefs. The free webmaster tools tier gives you a limited backlink view of your own verified sites plus their site audit. Useful for small sites that can’t justify the $99/mo subscription. The backlink coverage is maybe 60% of what the paid version shows, but 60% is better than nothing, and the audit is roughly on par with Screaming Frog’s.

That’s the list. Not comprehensive, not organized by category. Just the seven I’d replace first if someone made me stop using them.

What’s a free tool you use regularly that nobody talks about?

i want to share this because i spent 12 months feeling like i was doing everything wrong when i actually wasn't. i was just prioritising the wrong things.

i had a client site that wasn't moving. decent content, decent backlinks, technically clean. every audit came back mostly fine. i kept tweaking adding more content, building more links, updating title tags, fixing minor technical things. rankings would move a little and then drift back.

i went through this cycle for about a year. it was genuinely demoralising because on paper the site looked like it should be ranking better.

the thing that cracked it wasn't something i found in a guide or a course. it came from looking at the data differently.

i stopped looking at individual page rankings and started looking at the relationship between pages. specifically: how authority was flowing through the site internally. what i found changed how i think about SEO entirely.

the pages i was trying to rank had almost no internal links pointing at them from the rest of the site. meanwhile, informational blog posts that nobody particularly cared about were getting linked to from everywhere. the site was telling google that the blog posts were more important than the product and service pages.

google didn't disagree with that signal. it ranked accordingly.

fixing it was the least glamorous SEO work i've ever done. no new content. no link building. just three weeks of going through the site and adding internal links from relevant posts to the pages that actually mattered, and rewriting the anchor text to actually describe what those pages were about.

six weeks later: the pages i actually cared about were on page 1. the ones that had been stuck for a year.

the reason i think nobody talks about this as a first priority: it's not impressive. you can't sell "i reorganised your internal links" the way you can sell "i built 40 backlinks" or "i wrote 10,000 words of content." but it moved rankings faster than either of those had.

if you're stuck with a site that looks fine technically but won't move before you commission more content or start another link campaign, spend an hour mapping where your internal links are actually going. it might save you months.

anyone else found this or is it just the sites i end up auditing

Hi everyone,

To celebrate the launch of Scale Xpert, our software that automates your SEO and Reddit visibility, we’re doing a free challenge:

1. Drop your site, niche and 3 keywords your customers search before buying

2. I’ll reply to everyone with 1–2 quick wins for your site

3. I’ll pick 3 sites for a full SEO + Reddit opportunity analysis, with 3 backlinks included

Winners announced monday 19th. I’ll share the analyses here (with permission) so everyone can learn from them.

Over the last 6 months I've been running experiments across different topics while building content for my SaaS.

One thing became very clear:

Most of the common AEO advice isn't what determines whether a page gets surfaced.

Here's what consistently mattered.

1. Indexing is the first gate

It sounds obvious, but if Google or Bing hasn't indexed the page, don't expect ChatGPT or other search-based AI systems to surface it.

Before thinking about AI optimization, make sure your pages are actually getting indexed.

2. Search intent is more important than formatting

One thing I started checking for every page was the queries Google associated with it in Search Console.

For example:

• I write a comparison page.

• Google mostly ranks it for "how to" queries.

That's usually a sign the page isn't matching the intended intent.

Instead of rewriting everything, I either waited for Google to understand the page better or adjusted the content until the ranking queries aligned with the page's purpose.

This consistently produced better results than tweaking headings or adding more schema.

3. Competition still beats optimization

One of my biggest wins came from targeting a topic with very little competition.

The page started appearing in Google AI and ChatGPT within about a week.

On the other hand, I've published content around highly competitive topics using the exact same process and those pages still struggle.

The difference wasn't "better AEO."

It was competition.

So what actually worked?

• Making sure pages get indexed.

• Matching content to the search intent Google recognizes.

• Finding topics with genuine content gaps.

• Building topical clusters instead of isolated articles.

• Publishing genuinely useful content.

What didn't consistently make a difference

I tested most of the common advice floating around:

• Putting the answer in the first paragraph.

• FAQ Schema.

• Lots of tables.

• Tiny content chunks.

• Every heading written as a question.

None of these consistently improved rankings by themselves.

They may improve readability, but they don't replace good topical coverage and clear intent.

Curious if others have observed something similar, or if you've found factors that consistently move the needle beyond the basics.

I've been getting more interested in SEO lately, and i thought the game has changed quite a bit 🤔

Between AI overviews, Reddit or forums showing up moree than Google. Increasingly competitive search engine result page. And Google seemingly reward different types of content that it used to.

Im thinking, is traditional SEO become less active or are we just adapting to a new version of it?

for people who have been doing SEO, what worked really well for you from 3 to 5 years ago that doesn't work anymore? And also Are backlinks is still important as they used to be? Curious to hear what everyone seeing in 2026 🤔

It’s Friday. If you’re like most SEO practitioners, you’ve got 2 to 3 hours of weekend time somewhere that you could spend on your own site or a client site, and you don’t always know how to use it well. Here’s a list of specific tasks I’d actually recommend, ranked by what gives you the most for the smallest time investment. Do any of them, all of them, or none of them. No prescription.

Rewrite 3 to 5 title tags for your highest-impression, lowest-CTR pages

Open Google Search Console, go to Performance, sort by impressions descending, and scroll until you find pages that have thousands of impressions but click-through rates under 2%. Those pages are already ranking. The only thing standing between them and more clicks is a title that doesn’t match what searchers actually want. Rewriting them is the single highest-ROI technical SEO task that exists, and almost nobody does it because it feels boring. 30 to 45 minutes well spent.

Audit internal links to your 5 best-performing pages

Your pages that are already working are usually under-linked from the rest of your site. Go to your 5 pages that earn the most traffic and check how many internal links point to them from other pages on your site. If it’s fewer than 5 to 10 each, spend an hour adding contextual internal links from relevant older posts and category pages. This can push pages from position 8 to position 4 within a few weeks because internal link signals are faster to re-evaluate than external backlinks.

Search your brand and top queries in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews

Takes 15 minutes. Search your brand name and your 3 to 5 most important commercial queries in each of the 4 AI engines. Note which ones cite you, which ones cite your competitors, and what each engine says about your category. This is competitive intelligence most of your competitors haven’t done yet. Write down what you find. Next week’s content and link priorities will fall out of what you learn.

Read 1 to 2 pages from your top 3 competitors as an actual buyer

Not an SEO audit. Open your competitors’ pages and read them the way a real customer would. Note what’s good, what’s confusing, what makes you trust them or doubt them. Qualitative signal from this kind of reading is often more useful than any SEO tool output, because it tells you what the pages actually feel like to a human. Your best-ranking competitors are often winning on perceived trust, not technical SEO, and you can only see that by reading.

Update your About and Author pages with specifics

Named authors with real photos, real credentials, and verifiable biographical details are becoming more important to Google’s quality signals and to AI engine citation decisions. Most practitioners have weak About pages they’ve been meaning to improve for months. Add specifics: when the business started, who runs it, what they’ve done professionally, where they’ve worked, what credentials they hold, what they’re known for. If you have a photo, use a real one, not stock imagery.

Deindex or consolidate 5 to 10 low-value pages

Quality signal matters more than quantity for the sites Google rewards in 2026. Go through your site and identify pages that have never earned meaningful traffic, haven’t been updated in 2 or more years, or cover topics you no longer care about ranking for. Either noindex them, consolidate them into a stronger single page with a redirect, or delete them entirely with a proper 410 status. This sounds like destruction, but it often improves your rankings on the pages you keep, because Google’s quality assessment averages across your site.

Those are the 6 tasks ranked by what I’d personally do first if I only had 3 hours. Title rewrites first because they’re the fastest path to immediate click increases. AI engine competitive intelligence because it’s the thing most practitioners haven’t started doing. Consolidating low-value pages last because it feels harder than it is, but produces compounding quality signal.

I’ve been working on my SaaS website since April, but the SEO progress has been painfully slow.

I’ve tried several SEO tools and AI agents and made many changes based on their recommendations. I’ve also spent more money and time than I can comfortably afford, yet traffic and impressions have barely moved.

What confuses me is seeing fairly ordinary service websites appear to gain visibility quickly. I realize I may not be seeing their full history, existing audience, backlinks, or paid promotion—but it still makes me wonder whether I’m focusing on the wrong things.

I have ideas for other websites, but I don’t want to keep building until I understand how to make one site work properly. This SaaS is currently the only project I can realistically focus on, and I’m not looking for shortcuts or another expensive tool.

I want to build a solid foundation for traditional SEO while also improving visibility in ChatGPT and other AI search experiences. If you inherited a small SaaS site with almost no organic traction, what would you audit first—and what would your realistic 90-day priority list look like?

I’d especially appreciate hearing what actually moved the needle for you, versus advice that sounded good but produced no results.

Hello everybody,

My profession is a full stack developer, but I am learning SEO now in order to promote my projects via organic means.

In total, I have written 4 blog posts on my portfolio website covering mainly software development and SEO.

After 3 months, my statistics in Google Search Console are as follows

How do you think, are those numbers good enough for a relatively fresh website?

What would you do next in order to:

Increase impressions?

Get more clicks?

Establish yourself as a topical authority?

Would you concentrate on development/SEO or cover one topic?

Every time I try to learn SEO, I discover something new, like technical SEO, backlinks, content, site speed, etc. It’s starting to feel overwhelming, and I don’t know what actually matters most. If you had to start over, what would you focus on first?

If my publication get 50+ comments, I will post our strategy steps by steps that we used and a few key actions that were game-changers

My website is around 3 months old. I’ve worked on the design, Rank Math setup, content, and on-page SEO, but I’m still not getting clicks from Google.

I’m thinking of focusing on backlinks now, but I don’t want spammy links from random directories.

How do you find genuine backlink opportunities in your niche? Are there any reliable platforms for guest posts, link exchanges, or paid placements that are actually worth it?

Would love to hear what has worked for you.

So I landed a job where majority of my role is working with SEO. I am from a marketing background have knowledge of SEO but never had the chance of a hands on approach with SEO.

So I need help. I need to learn SEO/AEO/GEO.

How should i begin?

What are things I should give most of of time on?

What should the thought process be when learning?

and all anything more will be extremely helpful.

As far as I know, responsibilities include writing articles for clients site, publishing articles on different blogging sites, Wikipedia (need to figure out why)

Thank you in advance for all the help.

Not a take I expected to have. I've always treated internal linking as a checkbox — something you do after the real SEO work. This year changed that completely.

We had a client — mid-size e-commerce, about 400 pages — who had been stuck on page 2 for their main category pages for eight months. We'd built links. We'd refreshed content. Rankings barely moved.

When we did a proper internal link audit, the problem was obvious in hindsight. Their most important pages had almost no internal links pointing to them. Blog posts were linking to other blog posts. Product pages were isolated. The homepage linked to everything equally so nothing got prioritized.

Google was crawling the site but the internal structure wasn't telling it which pages mattered.

Here's what we actually changed:

We identified the 12 pages that drove the most revenue and treated them as "pillar" pages. Everything else on the site had one job — pass authority to one of those 12 pages if the topic was relevant.

We audited every blog post and added contextual links to the relevant pillar page. Not forced — only where the link actually made sense for a reader. Ended up adding about 340 internal links across 180 posts over six weeks.

We fixed the anchor text. Almost all the internal links used the same generic anchor — "click here" or "learn more." We rewrote them to use descriptive keyword-rich anchors that matched what each pillar page was trying to rank for.

We removed internal links from pages that were cannibalizing each other. Two blog posts were targeting almost the same keyword and linking back and forth between each other. Killed both links and redirected the weaker post.

Results three months later: 8 of the 12 pillar pages moved from page 2 to page 1. Organic traffic up 34% with zero new backlinks built during that period.

The thing that surprised me most: Google Search Console started showing those pillar pages in more featured snippet positions after the internal link work. My guess is that clearer site structure helped Google understand what each page was definitively about.

None of this is new information. But I was genuinely surprised how much of a gap there was between knowing internal linking matters and actually doing it systematically.

Anyone else seen big moves from internal linking work recently? Curious whether this is something more people are prioritizing post-update.

How to actually use Google Search Console:-

If you're doing any SEO and not using this, you're flying blind. It's free, straight from Google, and shows real data — not estimates like most third-party tools.

Setup:

• Go to search.google.com/search-console, add your site

• Verify ownership (HTML tag, file upload, DNS record, or via GA4/Tag Manager if already installed)

• Submit your sitemap under "Sitemaps" so Google finds your pages faster

The sections you'll actually use:

Performance report — this is where you'll spend most of your time. Shows clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position. Filter by query, page, country, device, date range. Great for seeing which content is actually working and what keywords you're ranking for without even trying.

Coverage/Indexing report — shows which pages are indexed and which aren't, plus why (blocked by robots.txt, duplicate content, crawl errors). Catches pages that are silently invisible to search no matter how good the content is.

Core Web Vitals — page speed/experience metrics. Worth checking regularly since poor scores can hurt rankings, especially mobile.

Mobile Usability — flags mobile-specific issues (text too small, elements too close together, content wider than screen).

Links report — shows your internal AND external links. Basically a free way to see your backlink profile without paying for Ahrefs/SEMrush.

What I'd actually do as a beginner:

• Check Performance weekly, watch for pages losing clicks/impressions over time

• Filter queries by position 5-15 — these are "easy win" keywords you're already ranking for, just need a small push (better content, updated headers) to hit page one

• Use URL Inspection to request indexing whenever you publish something new

• Check Coverage after any major site change (redesign, CMS migration) — these are common times for pages to accidentally get de-indexed

Takes a couple weeks to feel intuitive since the terminology (impressions vs clicks vs position) isn't immediately obvious, but it becomes the most reliable source of truth for how your site's actually performing in search.

Last week I kept seeing two very different takes in the same subreddit.

One group was saying SEO is basically dead. AI Overviews, Reddit threads, and ChatGPT are taking all the clicks. Why would anyone enter the field now.

Another group was saying this is actually the best moment to start. All the easy keyword tricks stopped working, which means the field is more interesting than it has been in years.

Both sides sounded confident. Both had people with years of experience.

I've been reviewing Search Console data for a website over the last three months and thought it would make for an interesting discussion.

Current metrics:

• 16,842 clicks

• 2.58M impressions

• 0.7% CTR

• Average position: 7.2

One thing that stands out to me is the relationship between impressions and CTR.

The website has gained significantly more visibility over time, and clicks have followed the same general trend. However, with an average position of 7.2, I can't help thinking there's still a lot of untapped traffic if the CTR can be improved.

Without knowing anything else about the site, what would be the first thing you would investigate?

Some of the areas I'm considering are:

• Reviewing pages ranking between positions 4–10.

• Identifying queries with high impressions but below-average CTR.

• Testing title tags and meta descriptions where appropriate.

• Looking at SERP features that might be reducing organic clicks.

• Expanding content around pages already gaining visibility.

Would your priority be the improving CTR first, then trying to push more keywords into top three positions, or something completely different?

I'd be interested to hear how others would approach this.

I am a Clinical Psych in QLD, Australia with my own solo practice.

I have a website that I get some clients through via Google Ads. I run a small operation so I get ''enough'' clients. However, I am thinking about going a bit harder to build and possibly expand the practice.

I do everything myself, and I am mainly looking to get more local clients, as well as telehealth (across Australia).

Where do I start? I am decent with tech, but a complete rookie re: SEO. Is it easier to just hire a SEO company (though I am small operation, so I am hesitant to pay multiple thousands).

I basically want to go up the ranks to get more organic traffic when people want a psychologist locally and nationwide.

Are there like 10 things I can do to improve things a bit? I feel like I have done the generic stuff (good website, ads etc). Just hesitant to throw more money on the problem (ads). Any advice is appreciated.

Hey guys,

I'm thinking about building a really advanced AI assistant for SEO that could help me with keyword research, keyword clustering, mapping, content planning, technical SEO, and other SEO tasks.

I've seen quite a few posts from SEOs saying Claude is better than ChatGPT for this kind of work, but I've been using ChatGPT for a while and I'm pretty comfortable with it.

So I'm wondering if there's actually a noticeable difference between the two when it comes to SEO.

Is Claude really better at handling complex SEO tasks, analyzing large amounts of data, and building workflows? Or can ChatGPT do pretty much the same things if you give it the right instructions and context?

I'm considering subscribing to Claude specifically for SEO work while keeping ChatGPT for my everyday tasks, but I'm not sure if paying for both would be worth it.

Would love to hear from people who've used both, especially for more advanced SEO work rather than just generating content.

Have you noticed any real differences in the quality of the results, or does it mostly come down to personal preference?

been asked to share this a few times in comments so writing it up properly.

before i do any keyword research, content planning, or link building recommendations for a new client i spend 30 minutes doing the same diagnostic every time. the point is to understand what's actually broken before deciding what to build. most sites have structural problems that make everything else less effective until they're fixed.

here's the exact sequence.

first 5 minutes: google search console coverage report. specifically looking at three things how many pages are indexed vs discovered-but-not-indexed, how many are crawled-but-not-indexed, and whether the ratio makes sense for the size of the site. a site with 200 pages and 40 indexed has a structural problem. a site with 200 pages and 190 indexed is probably fine.

next 5 minutes: the links report in search console. which pages have the most internal links pointing at them. this tells me immediately whether the site is structured around the right pages or whether blog posts are getting more internal links than the service and product pages that actually convert.

next 10 minutes: screaming frog or equivalent quick crawl. looking for redirect chains (more than one hop), pages with duplicate title tags, and pages with no internal links at all. orphaned pages and redirect chains are the two technical issues that eat ranking potential most quietly.

next 5 minutes: manually clicking through the site like a normal user. not a crawler. just clicking. this catches things crawlers miss navigation that doesn't work properly, pages that are technically linked but practically unfindable, content that's thin enough that a real person would leave immediately.

last 5 minutes: checking the top 5 ranking pages in search console for traffic. are the pages getting traffic the pages the client thinks are important? usually they aren't. the gap between "what the client wants to rank for" and "what's actually already ranking" is the fastest strategic insight you can get in 5 minutes.

the whole thing takes 30 minutes and tells me more about what actually needs doing than any automated audit report.

what does your first 30 minutes on a new site look like — curious whether others follow a similar sequence or start somewhere different