Hey Reader, You know that feeling when a brand new restaurant opens up in your town? Gorgeous space. Interesting menu. Everyone's buzzing about it. But you won't go yet, because nobody you actually trust has been there. No reviews. No word of mouth. No data. So you wait. That's exactly what Google does with your brand new website. It shows up. Looks around a little. And leaves. Not because your site is bad. Not because your content isn't good. Because your site is unproven, and Google needs...
7 days ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader! I want to make sure I'm not sending you the wrong things. So let me ask you this... Where are you at right now? Learning more about SEO/web design Hesitant to invest...curious on return/value Ready to start improving traffic and conversions today No pitch here. I just want to send you the right strategy moving forward. Amber
10 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, I want to tell you about a conversation I had with a client recently that stopped me cold. We were working through a site audit together, reviewing pages, assessing content value, making decisions about what stays, what gets updated, and what gets retired. Normal stuff. And then the suggestion came in: "Let's set up a 301 redirect on our main service page and point it to our new external landing page." The external landing page. Outside the brand domain. Away from the website...
13 days ago • 6 min read
Hey Reader, I want to start this week with something from my podcast. On Episode 4 of Ready For Traction, dropping this Tuesday, I talk about communication boundaries in business. Specifically, the kind that determines whether your business runs like a well-tuned machine or like a garage door that's always slightly open and anyone can just wander in whenever they feel like it. There's a story in the episode I think you'll recognize immediately. Picture a client who is genuinely great. Smart,...
21 days ago • 6 min read
Hey Reader, AI search is moving fast. ChatGPT is answering questions. Perplexity is citing sources. Google’s AI Overviews are eating the top of the SERP. And every week, a new wave of consultants and agencies are rebranding themselves as AI search experts. Some of them know exactly what they’re doing. Others learned about AI Overviews in a YouTube video last quarter and updated their Canva deck. Your job is knowing the difference before you sign a contract. 🔴 THE FIVE RED FLAGS Before you...
28 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, I want to start this week with a story about two letters. Not two words. Not two sentences. Two letters. A client of mine has been in a newer building for about two years. Great location, established business, solid local presence, the kind of setup that should be ranking consistently in local map results. But over time, something quietly went wrong. Local map rankings started slipping. Nothing dramatic. No algorithm announcement. No obvious cause. Just a slow, steady decline that...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader, I need to tell you about something that happened with a client this week. He forwarded me an email. One of those cold outreach pitches, the kind that promises to rank your site at the top of Google and in AI search in two weeks. Bold claim. Aggressive timeline. And to back it up, they included a screenshot. The screenshot showed a metric climbing beautifully. Big numbers. Impressive trend line. The kind of chart that makes a business owner's eyes light up. The metric they were...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, I'm bringing something back this week. Early in this newsletter I used to drop an SEO Term of the Week, a single concept, broken down in plain English, explained in a way that actually sticks. No jargon. No fluff. Just clarity. Given everything we've been talking about lately, AI search, authority signals, what it actually takes to get cited, it felt like exactly the right moment to revive it. Because this week's term sits at the center of everything. This week's SEO Term of the...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, I've spent the last few weeks in this newsletter talking about what not to do. Don't let AI make your SEO decisions unsupervised. Don't ignore the shift in how clicks are moving. Don't mistake content volume for content authority. All of that is true. And I stand by every word of it. But this week I want to flip the lens completely, because I've been sitting on a client story that perfectly illustrates what winning in search actually looks like in 2026. And I think it's going to...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read