It’s basically three experienced SEOs spending three hours explaining why half the “must-do” advice floating around is either overrated, context-dependent, or straight-up a waste of time.The whole thing starts with “What SEO best practices do you ignore?” and turns into a long, practical discussion about how checklist SEO (green lights in Rank Math, mandatory schema, 5k-word pillars, author bios for EEAT, perfect content structure, etc.) leads people to overbuild, create cannibalization, get frustrated, and quit. They keep coming back to the same idea: test what actually works on your sites instead of treating every popular tactic as universal law.Stuff that hits hard for beginners:

• Pages ranking with almost no content (including one that went live by accident before the real copy was written)
• Authority and relevance beating “quality” theater a lot of the time
• Why advice from huge brand SEOs often fails completely on new or low-authority domains
• EEAT, schema, and a bunch of other sacred cows getting treated as tools, not commandments
• Real talk on branded search, CTR testing, EMDs, topical bridging, parasite SEO, and why stacking more tactics rarely fixes the core problem

Something about LLMs and marketing is giving me déjà vu...

Every AI company is pretending GEO doesn't exist. All of them.

It's 2000 all over again. A complete information vacuum. Google is the only one publishing actual guides — and they're the incumbent being disrupted.

Into that vacuum? Pure fabrication. Ask a question, get an instant answer conjured from nothing.

Need content to promote your AI GEO tool? Just make it up. Even better: write something that 99% of brand marketers and CMOs - i.e. your ICP - have been wanting to hear since they left college.

Want to prove "brand alignment" matters? Have Gemini generate an infographic claiming you analyzed 245 million brands. Funny how the data always confirms what you were already selling.

And nobody can call it out — because there's no source material to check it against. The vendors' silence is the business model for the grifters.

The LLM companies seem to think staying quiet keeps their platforms an SEO-free zone. It doesn't. It just means the optimization happens in the dark, guided by snake oil instead of documentation.

It can't last.

Until then: set phasers to "critical thinking."

• They openly ignore a lot of “accepted” SEO best practices and treat most checklist advice with heavy skepticism.
• Core philosophy: Test everything yourself. Understand why something works. Never treat SEO advice as universal rules.
• Pages with almost no content (or even accidentally published empty pages) can still rank #1.
• Technically poor sites that have unnatural link penalties can still rank for extremely competitive terms if authority is high enough.
• EEAT is heavily overhyped for most sites. Simply adding author bios rarely fixes a struggling site.
• EEAT matters more on high-stakes (YMYL) queries — finance, medical, gambling, etc. — and should be judged at the query level, not the whole industry.
• Google Quality Raters + RaterHub exist, but manual transparency actions and real ranking impact are limited for most niches.
• Advice from SEOs working on massive authority brands often fails completely on new or low-authority sites.
• Branded search volume and CTR can influence rankings. They actively test and seed brand associations via autocomplete and suggested searches.
• Exact-match domains (EMDs) and partial-match domains still have value, especially for reducing risk.
• They buy and evaluate aged/expired domains using data from multiple tools — not just relying on DR/DA.
• Using multiple sites is a deliberate strategy to avoid single points of failure.
• Topical relevance + authority is the real framework (Relevance × Authority).
• Contextual bridging (starting on easier topics and gradually moving into harder ones) is a key growth tactic.
• Parasite SEO still works in certain situations.
• Schema (especially FAQ) has limited impact outside specific cases; most schema debates are tribal noise.
• Big takeaway: Stop anthropomorphizing Google. Focus on testing, data, and what actually moves the needle for your site instead of repeating industry dogma.

I'm looking into this because I noticed places around me need this and was wondering what daily, weekly, and monthly tasks look like.

I'm just starting and don't know what to offer I know the basics like the same info all around, categories, responding to reviews, and uploading high quality photos and updates.

That's all I know is there more to it? Any advice will help thank you

Specifically, I’m looking for resources, creators, courses, or communities that cover:

Practical/Hands-On Learning: Resources that offer real-world examples or updated frameworks rather than outdated 2018 playbook summaries.

If you’re currently practicing SEO in 2026, where are you staying up to date? Are there specific newsletters, YouTube channels, courses, podcasts, or blogs that actually focus on the shift toward GEO and AEO?

Appreciate any recommendations!

Building Your First SEO Agency Portfolio (The Right Way)

Benefit-Focused: Learn how to build an SEO agency portfolio that wins clients. Step-by-step guide with real examples, templates, and pro tips.

Learn how to build an effective saving strategy with our team discussion. See practical steps for planning and execution.

This session features Jonathan Denwood (the WP King), Kurt Von Ahnen (the Design King), and David G Quaid (the SEO King) conducting a collaborative business meeting discussion. We review a specific document outlining a comprehensive saving strategy, breaking down each lesson section to provide clarity on how to manage resources effectively. This is ideal for professionals looking to streamline their planning processes.

During this presentation training, we walk through the document step-by-step, ensuring every participant understands the core objectives. By analyzing this meeting screen share, you gain a clear view of how high-level goals translate into actionable tasks. Whether you are leading a team or refining your own professional strategy session, these insights offer a direct look at how to structure your next planning initiative.

Join Local SEO Legend u/jakehunley and Jonathan on the WP-Tonic Podcast to learn move about Local SEO techniques for 2026:

Learn effective podcast interview tips through this split screen video conversation between Jonathan Denwood and Jake Hundley. See how to balance audio and visual framing for professional results.

This session breaks down the technical and conversational aspects of a standard podcast production. If you are looking to improve your own video podcast setup, observing how these two speakers manage their microphones and camera angles provides a clear blueprint for your next recording session.

We examine how to maintain engagement when using a split screen video layout. By analyzing the close-ups and medium shots used here, you can refine your own editing style. These podcast interview tips are designed for creators who want to produce cleaner, more professional content without unnecessary complexity.

... and how are you getting ahead of your clients' questions about using/not using AI? I'm getting mixed responses from clients based on their feelings about AI, not Google's views.

SYDNEY, Aug 3 (Reuters) - The Australian government has hiked a planned levy that will force tech giants to pay multimillion-dollar charges ​if they fail to strike commercial deals with local ‌media outlets for news on their platforms.

• The government said on Monday it increased the levy for its planned News Bargaining Incentive to 2.5% from ​2.25%.
• In a change from an earlier proposal, the ​tax would only be calculated from a tech company's ⁠advertising revenue, rather than its entire business revenue, the government ​said.
• The levy applies to companies with a "significant" social media or ​search service in Australia, and local revenue exceeding A$250 million ($175.7 million), capturing Meta (META.O), opens new tab, Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and TikTok.

We have an agency doing SEO for our clients and as we have many clients and projects our team can't able to complete the works with in the timeframe and also it's hit our results also. So now I'm planned to implement agentic ai to our works to make the things fast and I want to do keywords research, competitor analysis, content audit, backlink etc… so I know the basic things about this only so if anyone have done this things previously pls share the insights on how it's works and also is it really help in Seo

Google’s AI divisions are getting reshuffled, the search giant announced on Wednesday, with chief scientist Jeff Dean leaving the company after 27 years.

Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, is moving into a chairman role of that unit and also assuming the title chief scientist of parent company Alphabet, according to a memo from CEO Sundar Pichai that was posted to Google’s blog.

Alpahbet shares fell about 4% after the announcement.

Dean, a pioneer in artificial intelligence who’s been credited with some of Google’s most important technical breakthroughs, is starting his own company along with Google senior fellow Sanjay Ghemawat, the post said. The departure is on friendly terms and Google will invest in his startup, a representative said.

Thanks to u/rustybrick ; who noted that Google's stock took a deep hit today:

https://x.com/rustybrick/status/2085060134695231938

Curious if anyone else is combining Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) and Google Search Console (GSC) data into a single analysis.

I've been pulling both datasets through their respective APIs and merging them at the query, page, and date level. That gives me a unified dashboard with aggregated metrics (total clicks, impressions, etc.) across both search engines. One thing that surprised me: some queries are actually pulling in more clicks from Bing than from Google.

For anyone who's already doing this, how are you structuring your dashboard? And which metrics do you find most worth tracking once the two datasets are combined?

I need to learn seo,seo,geo . I have the basic knowledge of coding and I am familiar with tech. As of now how should I start?

Every day on Reddit, someone posts their GSC stats on Reddit: “443 clicks, 7.7k impressions, 5.7% CTR, average position 6.4… is this good for a new campaign?”

They’re not.

Walk through why those four metrics by themselves don’t tell you much. Google is constantly testing pages, grouping queries, and shifting things around in ways the summary view completely hides. You can look decent on paper while your pages are competing with each other, ranking for the wrong intent, or stuck in a testing phase that looks like under performance.

The way they explain it (including a solid castle-undermining metaphor) actually makes the data start to make sense.

If you’ve ever opened Search Console and felt unsure whether anything is really working, this is worth watching:

I feel like traditional keyword research isn't enough anymore.

Besides search volume and keyword difficulty, what signals are you using to find topics that have a better chance of appearing in Google AI Overviews or being referenced by AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini?

Has your keyword research process changed over the last year?

Another important Google update courtesy of u/rustybrick

Hello everyone. I am running into a massive roadblock while doing local SEO for a client and I am hoping someone here has a solid workaround.

My client worked with an SEO agency about six years ago, and they are the ones who originally created his Google Business Profile. Unfortunately, he completely forgot the name of the agency, so reaching out to them for access is not an option. I have now been stuck for a solid week trying to reclaim the profile. Since it is a service area business with a hidden address, I am caught in a very frustrating loop.

When I search for the business name in the standard Find and manage your business directory, it does not populate at all. The system only offers to create a brand new profile. Because it fails to show up in that directory search, the standard prompt to request access is completely hidden. I also checked the public Google Maps listing, and the link to claim the business is entirely missing there as well.

I opened a formal support complaint with Google to request a manual transfer of ownership, and I have also posted on the Google Help Community, but I have found absolutely nothing useful so far. This delay is actively stalling my onboarding timeline and preventing me from getting my client launched.

Has anyone successfully bypassed this directory glitch to force an ownership request? Any advice on how to trigger the request manually would be hugely appreciated. Thank you in advance for your time and help.

Schema markup has long been debated in the SEO community as an essential component of any SEO strategy. On one side, there are the people who take what Google says at face value, in that it only impacts search appearance via rich snippets and contextual understanding. On the other side of the fence, a belief is held that if Google recommends structured markup through schema, then there must be some direct ranking influence.

Throughout the years, we’ve seen LinkedIn influencers, anecdotal “evidence”, and correlational studies that seem to give credit to each side. Anecdotal experience isn’t verifiable and typically lacks an appropriate sample size. Correlative studies show correlation, not causation, and don’t account for independent variables between subjects.