Working notes. From the keyboard.
Long-form notes on building content-first websites that rank on Google and get cited by AI assistants. Updated as topics warrant, not on a content calendar.
High-demand SEO guides
These are the guides Google is already testing in search results. Start here for the strongest current demand signals.
- Astro SEO guide for islands, content collections, and AI search
- Cross-stack SEO implementation across HTML, React, Next.js, Astro, Webflow, and Shopify
- Tailwind CSS SEO guide for accessibility and Core Web Vitals
- Webflow SEO guide for technical SEO, schema, and performance
- React SPA SEO guide for rendering, crawlability, and structured data
- Google Search Console analysis guide for impressions, CTR, and growth diagnostics
- AI Overviews SEO guide for citations, entities, and answer-first content
- Perplexity SEO guide for AI citations and answer-engine visibility
Recent insights
The opacity:0 LCP killer hiding in your GSAP entrance animation
Why scroll-driven entrance animations sabotage your Lighthouse score, and the transform-only pattern that fixes it without losing the polish.
Why your answer-engine surface needs a llms.txt before it needs a sitemap
How Anthropic, OpenAI, and Perplexity crawlers prioritize llms.txt as a discovery surface, and the canonical shape that gets your facts cited correctly.
The sameAs graph is more important than your meta description
How Google ties your Wikidata, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile together via sameAs threading, and why a broken sameAs link costs you Knowledge Panel real estate.
The 14-tier Engine Optimization stack
One self-contained article per tier. Each is a productized framework with concrete checklists, validation steps, and code patterns. Tier 13 is retired.
Tier 1 — Foundation
The 28 non-negotiable SEO basics. Crawlability, indexing, schema, Core Web Vitals, security.
Tier 2 — Search Visibility
28 items for crawl budget, XML sitemaps, internal linking architecture, and topical authority.
Tier 3 — AI Domination
20 items to get cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
Tier 4 — Entity and Authority
Wikidata Q-items, Google Knowledge Graph MID, sameAs threading, brand entity reconciliation.
Tier 5 — Local Domination
Google Business Profile, local pack rankings, NAP consistency, service-area pages.
Tier 6 — Content and Multimedia
Video SEO, podcast schema, image SEO, transcripts, captions, and rich-media surfaces.
Tier 7 — Social and Community
Social profiles, Open Graph, Twitter cards, community engagement, and branded queries.
Tier 8 — Data, Analytics & Conversion
GA4 setup, Search Console hygiene, GTM, Consent Mode v2, conversion tracking.
Tier 9 — Monitoring & Intelligence
Rank tracking, SERP monitoring, AI citation tracking, competitor intelligence dashboards.
Tier 10 — Workflow & Operations
Client onboarding, audit workflows, content briefs, operational SEO backbone.
Tier 11 — Marketplace & Retail
Ecommerce SEO, Amazon listings, Etsy SEO, marketplace structured data.
Tier 12 — International
hreflang, multi-language SEO, country targeting, localization, international SERP.
Tier 14 — Advanced & Immersive
AR/VR SEO, voice search, 3D model schema, immersive web standards.
The SEO & AI framework library
Reference documents that the 14-tier Engine Optimization stack draws from. Each one is a productized framework with concrete patterns, validation checklists, and current-state (2026) references.
Foundational quality + AI
AI engines
Technical SEO foundation
Strategy & discovery
Verticals
Stacks & CMS
Content & UX
Off-page & operations
Surfaces & features
Reference
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