7 min read
Half of All Redirects on the Web Are Broken
Researchers crawled 11 million redirects and found half never reach a live page. What the data says about redirect chains, canonical signals, and migration timelines.
Read MoreTechnical Seo
78 articles
7 min read
The Image Mistake That's Tanking Your Core Web Vitals
Images are the Largest Contentful Paint element on 83% of desktop pages. The specific, common mistake that turns a fast image into a slow one.
Read More9 min read
The Research Behind Blocking AI Crawlers
Why blocking an AI crawler doesn't erase your brand from ChatGPT, what language models actually memorize, and the research behind both.
Read More7 min read
Why Your Hreflang Tags Aren't Working
Google ignores hreflang tags more often than most sites realize. The reciprocal-link rule, the language-code format, and the spec behind both.
Read More6 min read
Author Markup: Show Google and AI Who Wrote It
Google's Article structured data guidance says to mark up each author with a Person type and a sameAs link. It's the machine-readable half of E-E-A-T.
Read More5 min read
FAQ Rich Results Are Gone. Keep the Schema.
In 2023 Google removed HowTo rich results and cut FAQ rich results to a few authoritative sites. The markup still earns its place — for AI, not stars.
Read More7 min read
The Meta Tag That Controls If AI Can Quote You
Google says the nosnippet directive also blocks a page from AI Overviews and AI Mode. One line of markup decides whether AI can quote you.
Read More8 min read
Why PDFs Are Disappearing From Google Search Results
PDF impressions collapsed as much as 96% starting August 6-7, 2026, before the spam update. How to check your own site and what to do about it.
Read More8 min read
Google Changed How It Reads Your Schema Markup
Google now applies a single pass of HTML unescaping to JSON-LD. Double-escaped schema that used to work may now fail. How to check and fix yours.
Read More10 min read
ADA Compliance and the Real Cost of Skipping Captions
What WCAG 2.1 AA, the ADA, and the Rehabilitation Act actually require for video and podcast captions, and what it costs to skip them.
Read More11 min read
A Vendor-Evaluation Checklist for Transcription Tools
A synthesized checklist covering security, consent law, accuracy research, and pricing for evaluating any transcription vendor before you upload a file.
Read More10 min read
Security Questions to Ask Any Transcription Vendor
A vendor-neutral checklist for evaluating any transcription tool's security and privacy practices, built from a published enterprise security guide.
Read More13 min read
301 vs 302 Redirects: The Complete Guide
What a 301 redirect actually does, when a 302 is the right call instead, how to map redirects so they don't cost you rankings, and how long to leave them running.
Read More12 min read
Backlink Audit: How to Check Your Link Profile for Free
Most small business owners have never looked at their own backlinks. Here's how to run a real audit with free tools, no Ahrefs subscription required.
Read More11 min read
Category Page SEO: What E-commerce Sites Get Wrong
Category pages rank for the searches that actually drive traffic, yet most e-commerce sites leave them as a bare product grid. Here's what to fix.
Read More11 min read
Faceted Navigation Is Eating Your Crawl Budget
Every filter combination on a category page can generate its own crawlable URL. Here's how that happens, why it hurts rankings, and how to fix it.
Read More11 min read
Heading Structure: What H1-H6 Actually Do for SEO
Google has said directly that heading count and keyword-stuffed H2s don't move rankings. Here's what H1-H6 structure actually does, and why it still matters.
Read More12 min read
Internal Linking Strategy: Beyond Adding More Links
Adding more internal links isn't a strategy. Here's the framework for deciding which pages should send link equity to which, and why.
Read More11 min read
Multi-Location SEO: Location Pages That Don't Compete
Templated location pages with only the city swapped compete against each other. What should differ, one GBP per location, and LocalBusiness schema.
Read More10 min read
Pre-Launch SEO Checklist for Any New Website
A sequential pre-launch SEO checklist: robots.txt, GSC and GA4 setup, canonical tags, sitemap submission, mobile-friendliness, SSL, and custom 404 pages.
Read More11 min read
Out-of-Stock Products: Don't Delete the Page
Deleting an out-of-stock product page throws away rankings, reviews, and backlinks. Here's the decision tree for what to do instead, and how to update your schema correctly.
Read More12 min read
Product Schema: What It Is and Why It Matters for Clicks
Product schema puts price, availability, and star ratings directly in your search listing. Here's what to add, what to skip, and how to avoid a manual action.
Read More10 min read
URL Structure: The Small Decisions That Compound Over Time
URL structure gets decided in week one and lived with for years. Here's how to get folder depth, dates, and word separators right before you publish.
Read More11 min read
Platform SEO AI Prompts
Six AI prompts auditing SEO settings on WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Webflow, Wix, and Ghost against each platform's own limits.
Read More6 min read
Block the Training Bot, Keep the Answer Bot
Most sites that try to block AI accidentally block the crawlers that get them cited in ChatGPT and Claude. The robots.txt difference that matters.
Read More6 min read
Why Deleting Backlinks Won't Restore Rankings
Google's SpamBrain neutralizes manipulative links rather than penalizing them, and its own docs say the lost ranking cannot be regained. What that means for your backlinks.
Read More6 min read
Google Spam Policies: What Gets You Penalized
Google's 2024 spam update added three abuse policies and cut low-quality results by 40%. What each one forbids, and how to audit your own site before enforcement does.
Read More8 min read
Content Pruning: When Deleting Lifts Rankings
Cutting dead pages can raise the ones that remain. What to prune, what to keep, and how to remove pages without losing link equity.
Read More8 min read
Keyword Cannibalization: When Two Pages Fight
Two of your pages target the same query and split each other's authority. How to find keyword cannibalization in GSC and fix it by merge or canonical.
Read More7 min read
AI Shopping Agents Pick Products. Help Yours Win.
58% of shoppers now use AI for product recommendations. Here's how an AI agent decides what to suggest, and how to make sure your products qualify.
Read More7 min read
Canonical Tags: Telling Google Which Page Wins
Duplicate URLs split your ranking signals. Here is how canonical tags consolidate them, why Google treats them as a hint, and the mistakes to avoid.
Read More7 min read
JavaScript SEO: Will Google See Your Content?
If your site builds its content with JavaScript, Google can index a blank page. Here is how Googlebot renders JavaScript and how to check what it sees.
Read More7 min read
Mobile-First Indexing: What Google Really Sees
Google ranks the mobile version of your site, not the desktop one. Here is what mobile-first indexing requires and why a stripped-down mobile site costs you.
Read More8 min read
Author Bylines and E-E-A-T: Who Wrote This?
Google weighs who wrote your content. Here is how author bylines, bios, and Person schema feed E-E-A-T, and the pages where they matter most.
Read More11 min read
Cookieless Analytics: Consent Mode and Your GA4 Data
Your GA4 numbers may not be the full picture. Here's how Google Consent Mode and data modeling shape what you see, and how to read it.
Read More13 min read
Google Business Profile: The SEO Local Sites Skip
Your Google Business Profile drives the local map pack. Here is how to set up categories, photos, reviews, and posts so the right people find you.
Read More13 min read
Image SEO: How Google Finds and Ranks Your Pictures
How Google discovers and ranks your images: filenames, alt text, captions, file formats, compression, lazy loading, and image sitemaps explained.
Read More12 min read
Getting Reviews That Show Up in Search
Why reviews matter for local SEO and trust, where star ratings appear in search, and how to earn reviews that actually show up.
Read More13 min read
Video SEO for Small Business (No YouTube Needed)
How to earn search visibility for videos hosted on your own site: VideoObject schema, video sitemaps, thumbnails, transcripts, and page-speed tradeoffs.
Read More11 min read
Wix SEO: Working Around the Platform's Limits
Wix is fine for most small business sites. Here are the real SEO limits to know, the settings you fully control, and the workarounds that close the gap.
Read More8 min read
CrUX vs Lighthouse: Which Score Affects Your Ranking
PageSpeed Insights shows two different scores. One affects your search ranking. The other doesn't. Here's which is which and what to do with each.
Read More9 min read
The 17 Ranking Systems Google Confirmed: What Each Does
Google's official ranking systems guide lists 17 named active systems. Most SEO content treats Google as a single algorithm. Here's what the primary source actually shows.
Read More7 min read
INP Replaced FID: What Core Web Vitals Measure Now
FID was retired in March 2024. INP replaced it as the responsiveness metric in Core Web Vitals. Here's what changed, what the thresholds are, and why it matters.
Read More8 min read
Why Standard JSON-LD Alone Doesn't Improve AI Citations
Adding schema markup is not enough. Research finds standard JSON-LD alone didn't produce AI retrieval gains. What does? Dereferenceable entity pages — and here's what that means.
Read More8 min read
Knowledge Panels: How Google Generates and Updates Them
Knowledge Panels appear automatically when Google has enough entity data. They don't come from submitting a form. Here's how Google generates them and how to influence yours.
Read More6 min read
Introducing the Brass-SEO Research Index
A curated index of primary literature on SEO and GEO — peer-reviewed papers, IETF standards, and independent benchmarks. No vendor white papers.
Read More8 min read
Entity SEO and the Knowledge Graph: What Wikidata Does
Google's Knowledge Graph launched with 'things, not strings' as its philosophy. Wikidata is a primary source. Here's what entity SEO looks like from the primary literature.
Read More9 min read
The Helpful Content System Is Now Part of Core
Google's Helpful Content System was integrated into core ranking in March 2024. Most coverage predates that change. Here's what the primary documentation says about HCS now.
Read More8 min read
What Google's Quality Rater Guidelines Actually Say
Google's 168-page Quality Rater Guidelines define E-E-A-T and YMYL. Most E-E-A-T content summarizes other blog posts. Here's what the primary document says.
Read More11 min read
Claude Code as Your SEO Engineer
Claude Code automates the technical SEO work that used to need a developer. Five concrete workflows: bulk title rewrites, schema audits, link graphs, and more.
Read More8 min read
Ghost SEO: What Works and What's Missing
Ghost ships with stronger built-in SEO than most platforms. The gaps are narrower than you'd think. Here's what Ghost handles and what it leaves to you.
Read More8 min read
Google Discover: How to Get Articles Featured
Google Discover sends millions of visitors a month to featured articles. Here's what gets featured, why, and how to make your content eligible.
Read More11 min read
Google Preferred Sources: How to Add the Button
Google now lets users pick Preferred Sources for AI Mode and AI Overviews. Here's the deeplink URL, the official badges, and how publishers add it.
Read More8 min read
Webflow SEO: Launch to First 1,000 Visitors
Webflow gives you more SEO control than any other visual builder. Here's the launch-to-traffic checklist that uses what the platform actually provides.
Read More8 min read
Squarespace SEO: Working Around the Limits
Squarespace ranks fine for some queries and badly for others. Here are the platform limits that cause the gap, the workarounds that help, and when to switch.
Read More8 min read
Shopify SEO: 7 Settings That Move Rankings
Shopify ships with sensible SEO defaults, then buries the seven settings that actually move rankings. Here's what to find, where they live, and what to change.
Read More7 min read
WordPress SEO Without Yoast: What You Need
Most WordPress SEO advice tells you to install Yoast or Rank Math. Here's what those plugins actually do, what WordPress provides natively, and what you can skip.
Read More9 min read
Site Migration SEO Checklist: Save Your Traffic
Site migrations lose 30-50% of organic traffic when done badly. Here's the checklist that protects what you've built, from prep through launch.
Read More18 min read
How to Read GSC's Search Appearance Report
Search Appearance is the most under-used tab in Google Search Console. Here is what each appearance type means, why it matters, and how to read the data.
Read More10 min read
llms.txt: A Practical Guide for AI Crawlers
What llms.txt is, how to write one for your site, what evidence exists for whether it works, and where it fits in your AI search strategy.
Read More9 min read
Schema Markup and AI Search: What Research Shows
What published research says about whether schema markup helps AI systems like ChatGPT and Perplexity cite your content.
Read More20 min read
12 Claude Prompts for Technical SEO Audits
Twelve copy-paste Claude prompts for technical SEO — from crawlability and robots.txt to log file analysis using Claude's 200k context window.
Read More15 min read
Is This Page Even Indexed? How to Check (and Fix It)
How to check if Google indexed your page, what each status means, and how to fix problems keeping your content out of search results.
Read More7 min read
HTTPS, WWW, and Slashes: The URL Issues You Don't See
Your site might be accessible at 4 different URLs without you knowing. Learn how to fix invisible URL problems like duplicate content and split authority.
Read More6 min read
Robots.txt: The File That Can Hide Your Site from Google
One line in a file you've never heard of can make your entire site invisible to Google. What robots.txt does, how to check yours, and what to fix.
Read More8 min read
Is My Website Slow? How to Check (Without Being a Developer)
Your website might be slow and you'd never know from your own computer. How to test your real speed, what the numbers mean, and which fixes matter most.
Read More7 min read
Google Says My Site Has Errors. Should I Panic?
Google Search Console shows errors on your site. Before you panic, here's what each one means, which ones matter, and which you can safely ignore.
Read More6 min read
What Is an XML Sitemap and Do You Need One?
An XML sitemap tells Google which pages exist on your site. Here is what it does, whether you need one, and how to check if yours is working.
Read More7 min read
Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly? Why Google Cares
Google uses mobile-first indexing, evaluating your mobile site first. If your site doesn't work well on phones, your rankings suffer. How to check and fix.
Read More8 min read
Why Your New Blog Posts Take Weeks to Appear on Google
You published a blog post and it's nowhere on Google. This is normal. Why it takes time, what the indexing pipeline looks like, and how to speed it up.
Read More8 min read
Your Page Is Indexed but Nobody Finds It. Now What?
Google indexed your page but it gets zero traffic. The gap between indexed and ranking is where most small business pages get stuck. How to close it.
Read More9 min read
Internal Linking: The Free SEO Tactic You're Ignoring
Most small business sites have almost no internal links. This free tactic helps Google discover pages, passes authority, and keeps visitors.
Read More9 min read
Schema Markup: The SEO Trick Hiding in Your HTML
Schema markup tells search engines what your page is about in their language. Which types matter for small businesses and how to add it.
Read More10 min read
Core Web Vitals: What Google Is Grading Your Site On
Google grades your website on three performance metrics. What Core Web Vitals are, what the scores mean, and which ones actually matter for you.
Read More8 min read
Duplicate Content: The SEO Problem You Don't See
Many websites have duplicate content without realizing it. Here's what it is, how to find it, and how to fix it before it hurts your rankings.
Read More10 min read
10 SEO Mistakes on Every Small Business Website
These 10 SEO problems appear on almost every small business website. Here is what they are, why they matter, and how to fix each one.
Read More10 min read
E-E-A-T: What Google Checks Before Ranking You
Google evaluates every website on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Here is what each one means and how to improve yours.
Read More5 min read
Technical SEO AI Prompts
AI prompts for site audits, Core Web Vitals analysis, and technical SEO fixes. Copy-ready for ChatGPT, Claude, and any AI tool.
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