The SEO Blog
Notes on search
Essays and field notes on technical SEO, web performance, and the quiet mechanics of ranking. Written from audits, not opinion.
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How to respond to a Google core update
Core updates reshuffle rankings a few times a year and reward panic with nothing. How to tell if you were hit, what recovery really looks like, and what to do while you wait.
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What makes a backlink worth having
Links still move rankings, just not the way the folklore says. How to judge a link's real value, what Google devalues silently, and how to earn the good ones.
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Meet the AI crawlers reading your site
GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and friends are fetching your pages for different reasons. Who they are, what each one feeds, and how to manage access.
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SEO split testing and how to prove a change worked
Before and after comparisons lie. How SEO split tests actually work, when page-level testing is possible, and how to read results without fooling yourself.
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What a slow server really costs your SEO
Server response time quietly shapes crawling, Core Web Vitals, and revenue. What TTFB actually measures, what counts as slow, and how to bring it down.
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Generative engine optimization and how to show up in AI answers
How AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity pick their sources, what GEO really changes, and why classic SEO still carries most of the weight.
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SERP features and what they do to your click through rate
Position one is not what it used to be. How AI Overviews, snippets, and packs reshape clicks, why rank tracking alone misleads, and how to respond.
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Crawl budget myths, realities, and who should actually care
Most sites do not have a crawl budget problem. Learn who really does, what moves Googlebot's behavior, and how to measure it with server logs and GSC.
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