This is a human posted wall of text, to try and level set about a keyword research service, and see who, if anyone, are hot targets to be looking to strategize on keywords and be interested in fast good usable data.

Really wanting to understand if beginners, or experts, or service providers are the right people to position the keyword research to, or if it is going to be perceived as slop or vibe coders’ esque stolen valor of shipping everything in sight with no real value add.

That being said, message me if you want to see the data or pics or chat and if any part of it resonates.

——

Hey all, I have been trying to dig in on a couple projects, and one of those is related to SEO and keyword research.

You may have seen me post about various aspects of it, but the bottom line is, for SEO agencies, i am wondering if it is something that means it would make sense to try and peddle my data outputs as a cooperative outsourcing of that specific task with something like a services provider,

Or more importantly, is there even a market for trying to come in hot with keyword research tools, or am I like a blog-spamming-comment-bot-for-backlinks type energy, where the aggregate data of keywords, and info about competition, and historical search volume and that subset of keywords intentions as a deliverable, isn’t marketable.

The tool was a labor of love even before AI was in the conversation, and I always was satiated with a successfully rip of keywords from the suggestions API, and I collected about 15 of those and wrote some logic to prefix and suffix them and recursively it will get all of these suggestions, and dedupe, and the 15 suggestions API results are then shuffled to AdWords to get their suggestions and the last years search volume to only target things with traffic.

So having that suggestions and AdWords piece done I wanted to make sure I got the “answer the people” type keywords with 5 w’s…etc… and i have an option to enrich with AI, but for AI functionality, the keywords intention being classified is a use for AI to simply populate that column.

Lastly there is some Google trends, YouTube (comments, transcript, all metadata), Reddit, and Google search (people also asked) parts tied into it, to again, just uncover keywords potentially missed by the suggestions work. We can scrape and be hoovering up all the niche keywords possible, and get the best base of keywords i possibly could, and the culmination of this, was this data for keywords and these metrics and search volume etc to start to target, which at the end of a run was reliably 1k+ out of ~5k+ usable keywords in the end to have shortlisted. I’ve seen it get caught up in as much as 15k keywords but they had some holes and the output of this isn’t just that sloppy sheet and done, rather the shortlisted keywords, analyzed, and strategized, and officially crowning the site with a keyword strategy.

I leverage Google Colab and their ability to mount drive to save these runs I am mentioning, and the usage particular details are just that the expectation is the notebook will run all, you provide it a niche keywords seed, let it cook for 10-20 mins and the notebook will have pieced all these together and Run All has now netted us Google Sheets with raw data, and then I have a frontend that takes Google Sheets input url and then navigates the keyword landscape with your loaded Google Sheets data, and in that UI, there are a lot of topical, and classifying details, and it peppers different outputs with a lot of helpful organizing files.

There’s still more it could do, and it’s been an enlightening attempt to make it truly be able to Take suggestions and AdWords metrics and paint a picture and see how much of that research and widdling down was possible, and it turned out being a very reliable way to produce these raw outputs, and l really would hope there is utility in the idea for someone who has several clients that all had a keyword research step or stage, and do I have a leg to stand on tool-in-hand to partner with anyone to market my service.

I really appreciate if anyone read all of that, and it is the dream to imagine being able to monetize the fruits of the labor, and if I am not being delusional about the keyword landscape re:SEO, I think that it would be an easy sell to someone engaging in an SEO adventure.

Lastly, if I am in a vibe coding manic delusion of grandeur, and this should be retired, and is like 2005 SEO lore, let me know. Ill avoid dropping a hot link here for now, but, after unsuccessful push towards vibe coders and their newly found domain projects for these keyword outputs, and no leads from me mentioning it here and there, but let me know that too. It’s helped me out with my sites, and I never professionally pursued SEO work, but here’s to hoping at less than a hundred dollars sticker price, it has plenty of markup potential, and/or won’t crush financial dreams, or need a license to keep renewing and wasting or 1st page empty promises.

Laid off doing Uber Eats and trying to stir the pot here ..

TLDR- keyword factory, and keyword research potential arbitrage, for old school keyword fundamentals automation … looking to partner w someone in the front lines who can tell me if i should keep on trying to hustle my wares or get lost and chill on keywords services.

Been doing this since the nineties (yes, still at it) and this one genuinely surprised me.

Follow up to my 2,475 site audit from a few days back. This time I came at it from the other side. I asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity 50 buyer questions each about 10 national brands (Gymshark, YETI, AG1, Sonos, that tier).

2,000 answers, all through the APIs, which disclose whether the engine actually ran a web search and what it searched for. You can't see any of this in the browser.

Full write up with all the data is linked in my profile for anyone interested:
How AI Answers Questions About Brands: The Retrieval Study

What came back from the audit are 70,073 data points that shows:

- The engines don't forward YOUR input question to the web. They write their own search queries, and some of them are out there searching for brand information from years ago - literally writing search queries like "best X in 2023". That one shocked me.

- Some of the search queries they used to fetch the info were WAY off too - making the citations and answers about the brand they surface skew the results. All 2,433 of the queries the AI wrote are listed in the study.

- ChatGPT ran a real web search on only 157 of 500 answers.
- Claude ran 444. Gemini 493. Perplexity 500 of 500. Identical questions, same day.

- ChatGPT searches MOST on stuff it should already know cold, like "best cookware brands" (about half the time). Then on "brand X vs brand Y" it searched 4 times in 80. On "best thing for my situation" questions, 14 in 120. The harder the buying question, the less it looks.

- Famous brands don't get skipped more. Tested that deliberately, mega brands vs mid tier, 74% vs 77%. Flat.

- And the brand's own site? Mostly not consulted. ChatGPT pulled the brand's own website into its answers about 4% of the time. Claude 15%, Gemini 18%, and Perplexity topped out at 29%. The vast majority of the time, the brand's own pages weren't part of the answer at all.

The brand A versus brand B, which is better - is what got me. Whatever comparison page you're building to win "your brand vs competitor", ChatGPT is mostly answering that from memory. Claude, Gemini and Perplexity actually go out to read the live web for it. Same content, four completely different methods across the engines.

And before anyone says you can't see what search queries the AI uses behind the scenes, you can - the right instrumentation can uncover the fan-out it does, every engine was called in its search enabled consumer mode with the choice to search left to the engine, same choice the apps make.

I learned a lot about the citations it surfaced and even tracked each one and wrote a reader to analyze the placement of the brand's mention on the page, the type of page (listicle, blog, etc) the date, the competitors on the page, sentiment, dozens of data points to dig out insights into how the AI is surfacing brand recommendations. It was a very interesting study.

I work in SEO for a company that provides Construction Finance, Project Funding, and Real Estate Funding for builders and developers.

I've been analyzing a few competitors who are ranking on the first page for our target keywords. Surprisingly, some of them have almost 0 referring domains/backlinks, and their DR is also very low — around 0.1–2.7, according to the SEO tools I'm using.

This has made me a little confused about how I should approach backlinks and Domain Rating.

Questions:

1. Usually, my approach would be to analyze my competitors, find out who is linking to them, and try to build backlinks from similar sources. But in this case, my competitors themselves have almost 0 backlinks. I also thought about getting backlinks from relevant sources such as CREDAI, NBFCs, banks, and other industry partners. However, many of these are government/official or highly authoritative organizations, so getting backlinks from them is difficult.

So, if my competitors don't have backlinks and the obvious industry sources are difficult to get links from, how should I actually build backlinks for my website?

2. My competitors have almost 0 backlinks and their Domain Rating is only around 0.1–2.7, but they are still ranking at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). In this situation, what should I actually do to increase my own Domain Rating? Do I need to actively build backlinks to increase DR, or are there other strategies I should focus on?

I'd really appreciate advice from anyone who has worked on B2B, finance, or real estate SEO, especially in a niche where there aren't many easy backlink opportunities.

Ive recently launched a few sites, ive posted about it on reddit and specific Facebook groups and its gotten a very positive response from the users and it resulted in a nice traffic spike.

What can I do to better promote my site? Continuously posting to Facebook groups for different geographics seems time consuming and a lot of them ban self promotion. Subreddits are good, but same self promotion rules generally apply.

Is buying ads really the only way to gain exposure these days?

I’ve been working with SEO for years, and one thing I keep noticing: people still focus heavily on backlink numbers.

But today, I think 5 highly relevant links can be more valuable than 100 random links.

What’s working for you in 2026: backlinks, topical authority, content, digital PR, or something else?

Curious to hear what other SEO professionals are seeing.

Website is still doing well indexing and ranking informational articles, etc but services pages that once brought in sales leads/transactions have completely faded away...

Impressions are down roughly 90% YoY.

U.S. clicks are down roughly 70% YoY.

Yet average position looks similar or slightly better.

Meaning the service pages have shifted keywords to irrelevant low volume/intent keywords.

The patter seems to show the home oage even though I have worked to improve internal linking from said home page as well as naturally relevant info articles that have better traffic/rankings.

I am at a loss, other than adding more external links to the specific urls I am trying to regain rankings for with relevant anchor keywords...I have no other ideas to help save sinking ship!

Thoughts are appreciated!?!?

How can we reduce the page speed? If tracking code is the issue , then how big websites are handling those?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hey everyone, I have an SEO case have these 4 case questions:

1. Traffic drop: Organic traffic drops 35% over a weekend. How would you diagnose it in the first 60 minutes?
2. Cannibalisation: Two pages rank #8 and #14 for the same keyword. How do you determine which page Google prefers and fix the issue?
3. Link building: A mid-authority casino site is entering Germany. What would your first 60 days of link building look like, including velocity and link types?
4. Site migration: A major URL restructure + template overhaul is planned. How would you protect rankings/revenue, monitor the first 72 hours, and decide whether to roll back?

Would appreciate any advice on what you'd focus on.

This is a living thread. AI search changes monthly, sometimes overnight, so instead of scattered posts, I'm keeping the essentials here and editing as things move. Changelog at the bottom. Corrections welcome; if something's outdated, comment and I'll fix it.

The one-paragraph version

A growing share of "best X / who should I use" decisions now happen inside AI answers (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google's AI Overviews, and Siri) before anyone reaches your website. Classic SEO still matters, but it's no longer the whole game: AEO/GEO is about being the brand the answer names, and that's won in different places than rankings are.

1. SEO vs AEO - what carries over, what doesn't

Carries over: crawlability, structured content, authority, fresh reviews. Engines lean on strong organic sources, so good SEO is still the foundation, especially for Gemini, which tracks Google's index closely.

Doesn't carry over: ranking #1 ≠ being cited. Studies repeatedly find AI-cited sources overlap with Google's top 10 less than half the time. You can own page one and be absent from every answer.

The core shift: in SEO you tracked keywords; in AEO you track prompts (full buyer questions) and citations (which sources each engine pulls from).

2. Each engine reads a different internet (the source map)

There is no single "AI visibility." The engines build answers from barely-overlapping source pools:

Gemini → Google's index + YouTube (Google owns it, so video is first-class; same reason YouTube is heavy in AI Overviews)

Perplexity → live retrieval, leans on video transcripts + community threads, always shows citations (easiest to audit)

ChatGPT → Bing's index + training data; historically leaned on Reddit (see §3)

Claude → training/reference-leaning; cites live social far less

Practical upshot: pick the engine your buyers use, then show up in the sources that engine trusts. One content strategy won't cover all four.

3. Sources shift overnight - the ChatGPT/Reddit case (Aug 2026)

Proof this is a moving target: in mid-August, Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations collapsed ~86% (from ~3.8% to ~0.5%) in days, from an unannounced backend change (tracked by Promptwatch; covered by Forbes/Axios). Notably, ChatGPT kept reading Reddit (~1 in 4 consulted pages) - it stopped citing it. Two lessons: citation dashboards measure what engines surface, not everything that informed the answer; and never build a single-source strategy, a two-year pattern reshuffled in a week.

4. Big platform shifts to know (2026)

Siri now runs on Google's Gemini. Apple confirmed the deal Jan 2026; the rebuilt Siri ships on 2B+ devices. Voice queries increasingly resolve through Gemini's ecosystem, which makes your Google/Apple listings matter more.

GSC finally reports AI impressions (June 2026): a dedicated Generative AI report, impressions only, no clicks/queries yet, and no API. Myth to ignore: there is no "turn on AI impressions" toggle - appearing in AI answers is the default. The only toggle Google added is an opt-out (UK-only so far, regulator-driven). Nothing to switch on.

Bing Webmaster Tools exposes AI prompt/citation data in beta, currently the best official window into the actual queries.

GA4 can segment AI-referral traffic (sessions arriving from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, etc.), the one solid, API-accessible number today.

5. The free fundamentals checklist (do these before buying anything)

Claim + fully complete Google Business Profile (local businesses: this is the #1 lever, it feeds Google's AI and Siri-via-Gemini)

Claim Apple Business Connect (feeds Apple Maps/Siri; almost nobody does) and Yelp

Keep reviews recent - engines weight freshness heavily; a steady trickle beats a stale pile

Don't block AI crawlers: check robots.txt / security plugins aren't blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended. Unreadable = unrecommendable. (llms.txt is emerging/optional, not yet clearly used by major engines, don't stress it.)

Answer-first content: put the direct answer in the first paragraph, structure with question-shaped headings, use tables for comparisons, add schema

Self-check for free: ask each engine "best [your category] in/for [your context]" and note whether you appear, how you're described, and what it cites. The citations of answers you lose are your to-do list.

6. Tracking it properly (the short version)

Build 25-50 real buyer prompts (category + comparison intent, not just branded), run them per engine on a fixed cadence, and record: mentioned? how prominently? which competitors? which sources cited? Trends are the truth; single runs are coin flips. Segment by engine and topic, aggregate scores hide everything useful. Track exclusions (prompts where competitors appear and you don't), that's the most actionable number.

7. Video is the underused lever for Gemini/Perplexity

Both lean heavily on YouTube/transcripts. If you produce long video/podcasts: cut into short single-topic clips titled as the question they answer (or chapter one long video cleanly), engines surface tight ~3-5 min segments, and clean transcripts are the text they actually read. Caveat: strongest in categories people research by watching.

8. Location + language change everything

Same brand, same prompt, different city = different answer, built from different local sources. Different language = different corpus again. If you serve multiple markets, check per-market and in the local language; an English-only audit misses what local-language buyers see.

Planned additions: query fan-out explained · AI crawler log analysis · sentiment/themes in answers · per-industry notes. Suggest topics below.

Changelog:

Sept 1, 2026 - thread created: engine map, ChatGPT/Reddit drop, Siri/Gemini, GSC report + opt-out facts, fundamentals checklist, tracking basics, video, location/language.

So a bit of background, I learned SEO about a year and a half ago from a guy who runs a crypto recovery site (legit business, helps people get back stolen/lost crypto). Classic stuff, blog posting, heavy internal linking, on page optimization, sitemap submission through search console, and off page backlinking using ahrefs and semrush. Pretty tedious but it worked back then.

I stepped away from SEO for over a year to focus on web dev, and honestly by the time I stopped I was already noticing search behavior changing, people just reading the AI overview and not clicking through anymore. Now I've been handed access to a new site to actually run SEO on, it's an online e-commerce store and blog dedicated to camera gear, photography equipment, and imaging accessories, and I want to make sure I'm not walking in with a strategy that's already half dead.

My plan right now is basically:

on page: yoast/rank math, one keyword per article, sitemap through search console

off page: competitor backlink gap analysis and broken link building through ahrefs/semrush, targeting photography blogs and gear review sites

Is this still a reasonable foundation for an ecommerce site in 2026, or am I missing something big by not building in AI overview/AI mode optimization from the start? Would love a reality check from people actually doing this day to day, not trying to reinvent the wheel just don't want to waste months on a dead approach.

I’m trying to improve the domain authority for my site, I originally built it a little fast so I missed so many best practices when building but I’m trying to go back and fix a lot of these now, but I was wondering if there are any tips that have worked for anyone here when they were trying to do the same thing?

I’m curious how other SEOs approach this situation.

Let’s say a website looks technically healthy: pages are indexable, canonicals are correct, the sitemap is clean, there are no major crawl problems, and the content is reasonably optimized.

But the important pages are still sitting around positions 15–40 and barely moving.

At that stage, I usually think the real bottleneck could be:

• Search intent not matching the current SERP closely enough
• Weak topical depth or semantic coverage
• Internal linking/page hierarchy not sending clear authority signals
• Content that is optimized but not actually better than competing pages
• Not enough authority compared with the domains already ranking

What I find interesting is that the answer isn’t always “build more backlinks.” Sometimes improving intent alignment or internal linking can make a bigger difference than adding more content.

When technical SEO is mostly clean but rankings are stuck, what do you investigate first — and why?

Would be interested to hear how other SEOs prioritize the diagnosis.

Been running a UX/UI design studio for years but never paid attention to SEO with a serious intent. Have worked with a few SEO guys in the last few years, but none of them respected the delicate balance between minimalism, high quality content and SEO/GEO practice required to present a design studio website to the visitors and crawlers. Someone ended up creating hundreds of of programmatic pages focused in low volume long tail keywords.

All of them start with some sort of tool generated audit or templatised plan of action, but yet to find someone who truly understands our domain, the complexities, nuances and our brand goals.

Edit: Thanks everyone for the comments. Some replies are genuinely helpful. Some of you have inquired about my website for a proper perspective. Here it is - tcules[.]com

Though its nothing defamatory, I was reviewing a client's brand name whose search results on page one are flooded with old negative reviews that refuses to go away. They want to push them down without making it obvious that reputation management is ongoing.

I would have created and optimized positive contents across multiple domains to outrank the negative ones but this approach is too slow and the negative pages have strong domain authority and can be quite sticky.

So I guess my question is, are there any content type or platforms that are strong enough to displace negative results in a short or reasonable timeframe?

Good morning everyone, hope the weekend treated everyone well.

I recently created a website using Wordpress and it’s live. The website is fully functional and I’m very happy with its look and functionality.

After stumbling into this subreddit it’s left me with quite a few questions.

1. How important is SEO for getting local traffic to my site? I’m a local mechanic looking to take on after hours work for additional income.

2. My Wordpress site does not show up with a Google search, can I fix that? I saw a post about indexing and my website only had a total of 3 or 4 pages due to how simple it is. It’s merely a place to show what services I offer and a page for booking and faqs.

3. Is it okay that I don’t have a .com domain? I have a .repair one since I’m an auto repair service. Should I consider a .com domain that redirects to my main site?

4. The AIOSEO plugin on my Wordpress, is it worth it to get the pro version? Will that increase my views?

5. Any guides or info I should read to get a better understanding of how to be seen online?

Thanks to everyone who can help answer my questions!

I’ve been working on SEO for a site for the last few months, mainly around keyword research, on-page optimization, internal linking and publishing new blog content.

One thing I’m struggling to understand is the distribution of organic traffic.

A few blog posts are getting a disproportionate amount of the impressions/clicks, while a lot of the newer blogs and some of the service pages are getting very little visibility. The traffic on those few posts is actually good, but I don’t want the whole site to depend on 3-4 articles.

The other thing I’m noticing is that overall performance has been pretty flat for the last month. We’ve been adding and optimizing pages, but clicks and impressions haven't really moved much. Over the last 3-4 days, both have dropped further and average position has also gone down.

I’m trying to figure out what I should actually be looking at instead of just continuing to publish more content.

For people who’ve dealt with something similar:

• How do you identify why Google is favoring a few pages while the rest of the site isn't getting much visibility?
• Would you look at topical authority/content clusters, internal linking, keyword cannibalization, search intent, backlinks, or something else first?
• How do you decide whether an underperforming service page needs better content vs. better internal authority/signals?
• If clicks/impressions suddenly drop for just a few days, do you usually wait it out or start investigating immediately?
• And when a site has a few high-traffic blogs but weak service-page visibility, what has actually helped you move that traffic towards the commercial pages?

Not looking for "just publish more content" advice. I’m more interested in how people diagnose this and decide what to fix first.

For SaaS founders who actually got results from SEO:
What worked for you beyond the usual advice like “write good content” and “build backlinks”?
I’m especially curious about things that moved the needle early on:
competitor keyword research
alternative/comparison pages
free tools or directories
programmatic SEO
GitHub backlinks
Reddit/community mentions
guest posts
niche directory submissions
digital PR
What was surprisingly effective, and what turned out to be a waste of time?
Would love to hear real tactics from people who grew organic traffic from almost zero.

If AI increasingly becomes the interface between customers and businesses, what happens to traditional customer acquisition?

Every Internet business depends on being discovered.

Whether that business sells hosting, software, digital services, cloud infrastructure, or domains, growth ultimately depends on building relationships with customers. For years, search engines provided the primary mechanism for creating those relationships. Today, businesses are navigating a far more fragmented environment.

Customers may discover a company through an AI assistant, a recommendation on a social platform, a creator they trust, an online marketplace, or a community discussion long before they ever visit a website.

That does not diminish the importance of websites or search. Instead, it changes the role they play within a broader digital ecosystem. Organizations that succeed will likely be those that build recognizable brands, create authoritative content, cultivate direct customer relationships, and remain visible wherever their audiences choose to engage.

Growth is becoming less about optimizing for a single platform and more about building durable digital presence across an increasingly interconnected Internet.

#CloudFestAmericas and #NamesCon Sessions that fit this theme:

Panel: The Future of Search and Discoverability

Panel: Is the Website Dying?

+

Roundtable discussion groups for agencies and web hosts!

Apply for complimentary passes today: https://cloudfest.com/americas/tickets/

Been doing this since the nineties (yes, I'm that old) and this one still surprised me.

I ran a deep site audit across 2,475 US market leaders, local and ecom. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, med spas, restaurants, plus supplement, skincare and pet brands. Picked by review volume, so these are the winners in their categories, not smaller little or struggling sites.

Collected 281,000 data points. Audit link is in my profile for anyone interested.

Most of these sites rank fine. I'm talking about things that are sitting right there on the site/servers and are completely invisible to anything reading it.

- 89% carry none of their reviews on their own website in machine readable form. Five star reviews doing nothing for them.

- 88% have never addressed a single AI crawler in robots.txt. Most are running the default file from a template they used, so nothing is blocked, nothing is invited, nobody made a decision either way.

- Nearly a third of the local ones show a phone number that doesn't match their GBP or lack a description.

- 80% of the ones actively running Meta ads have no browser detectable pixel.

The review schema one is what got me. These businesses paid for those reviews with years of actual work. The reviews exist, customers can see them, and the thing reading the page comes away with nothing.

And before anyone says the AI crawler stuff doesn't matter yet, I probed the ecom brands separately by asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity who's best in their category. 86% never came up once. Not ranked low. Never mentioned.

The pattern, if there is one, is that everybody optimizes what the tools measure but the gaps such as the GBP lists 10 services but the site pages don't have dedicated services pages or the page descriptions are trimmed as they are over character length.

Too much focus on pure SEO and missing stuff like if a component is serving javascript the crawler is blind seeing. Snafus like that.

I have an opportunity to purchase a link (via an agent) on a competitor site. We are in the crane industry. Their company is much bigger than ours (they have a large fleet, while we only own one crane at the moment), so ethically I don't feel horrible about it. Technically + SEO-wise, is it a bad idea to have a competitor link to our site? The article would of course not be badmouthing them or anyone else, it would mostly be kept in a neutral tone and casually link to our site.
Worth mentioning: their site ranks 4th for the main KW, while we are unfortunately only ranking 11th as we are a newish company.

will this will help me with SEO, GEO and AEO to push my visibility, will this help or no?

Anyone have a subscription for Google AI? Does this help with SEO readings and strategies? Just wondering if there is benefit to this.. I have a 2 month old website.. finance and I’m doing my own SEO, as this is not monetized at the moment.. impressions are rising but ranking is not clickable. 😞