This is where I write about SEO, which is the bit of digital marketing I've specialised in since 2019. Most of what ends up here comes from things I'm working through with clients at the time, whether that's moving a website without losing its rankings, choosing between platforms like WordPress, Shopify and Squarespace, or getting a local business showing up in the areas it actually covers.
Lately a fair amount of it has been about AI search too, as people are asking me whether SEO is dead and whether they need AEO or GEO on top of it. Generally speaking my answer is that good SEO still does most of the heavy lifting, and I try to explain why in plain English without the jargon. If something here doesn't quite fit your situation, drop me a message and I'm happy to talk it through.
Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is the work of making your content easy for AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews to find, understand and quote back to people. If you've come across the term and you're wondering whether it's a whole new thing you need to start paying for, then the chances are […]
If you've been reading up on AEO vs SEO, the chances are you're trying to work out whether you need to pay for something new on top of the SEO you already have, and generally speaking my answer is no. I've been an SEO specialist since 2019 and my view on the whole AEO and […]
A lot of what's being sold as AEO or GEO at the moment is really just good SEO with a new name on it, as you're still optimising a site for what people are searching for and they're just searching in a different way. Query fan-out is one of the few bits that I'd say […]
No, AI content isn't bad for SEO when you use it intelligently and as part of a process, where you do the research, fold in your own opinion and check every fact before it goes live. It starts to hurt when you just ask ChatGPT to write a blog on a topic and publish whatever […]
If you're deciding whether to build your next website on WordPress, or you're wondering whether the WordPress site you already have is holding you back, you've probably asked yourself whether WordPress is good for SEO. Generally speaking it is, as long as it's set up and looked after properly. There are two terms I'll use […]
Whether you're redesigning your website, moving to a new platform or CMS, changing your domain name or switching host, it all counts as a website migration, and each one puts the rankings and traffic you've built up at risk if search engines get left out of the plan. I've put this SEO migration checklist together […]
If you're weighing up WordPress vs Squarespace for a new website, or someone has told you that moving off Squarespace will sort your rankings out, then the chances are you just want to know which one is better for SEO. Generally speaking, WordPress gives you more control and more room to grow, but Squarespace covers […]
With an online store, what I'm trying to do with SEO is get the right shoppers onto your category and product pages, and then make sure those pages give them what they need to buy. Generally speaking that means matching searches to the right pages, keeping the store easy to crawl and marking up your […]
When it comes to your marketing you've generally got three options, which are to bring in an agency, hire a freelancer (or a few of them) or employ someone in-house. Any of them can work really well or go badly wrong, and which one suits you depends on how much work there is, what kind […]
Originally published on the Capsule Marketing website 2021 has been a busy year for Google, releasing an update (or fixing bugs!) to the search algorithm on average every month this year. The good news is that in a study conducted by SEMrush there has been a decrease in the intensity of core updates compared to […]