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...
about 3 hours 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...
7 days ago • 5 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...
21 days 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...
28 days ago • 6 min read
Hey Reader, Summer is here. People are hitting the gym, cleaning up their diets, dragging themselves through cold plunges, and generally pretending they're going to have abs by July. And meanwhile, your website is still sitting on the couch in sweatpants, wondering why it's not ranking. Consider this your website's summer intervention. We're doing a full diagnostic today — the same checks I run when I open a new client's Google Search Console for the first time. Some of what I find is fixable...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader, I'm going to be direct, probably more direct than most newsletters in your inbox. Because I'm genuinely concerned about something I keep running into, and I'd rather say it plainly than dress it up. Brands are handing their SEO decisions to AI. Not using AI as a tool. Not using it to support a strategy. No keyword research. No consideration of site history. No awareness of existing ranking momentum. Fully handing it the wheel. No human review of what those changes actually do to...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader, I want to be honest with you about something this week. I use AI. Every single day. I lean on it hard for research speed, for data synthesis, for pulling together information faster than any human team could. It makes me better at my job. And I also believe, deeply, without hesitation, that AI without human strategy is one of the most dangerous things happening in digital marketing right now. I saw it up close this week. A new client came to me after leaving their previous agency....
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, I want to have an honest conversation with you this week. Because I’ve been sitting across from clients lately — good clients, smart clients, brands doing the right things — and watching their faces when they look at their dashboards. The numbers look wrong. PPC clicks are down. Traffic reports look unfamiliar. And the first instinct is: something is broken. “Something IS changing. But broken? That’s not the word I’d use.” Here’s what I’m actually seeing — and what it means for...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, I want to talk about something I see constantly with brands that are doing SEO right, and still leaving serious visibility on the table. They've built solid organic rankings. Their content is strong. Their technical foundation is clean. And they're growing. But they're only running one engine. "SEO is the long game. PPC is the starting gun. The brands winning right now aren't choosing between them, they're running both." Here's what I mean, and why this matters more in 2026 than...
2 months ago • 3 min read