Dan Brown

SEO for 2025 onwards: 1. Stop getting caught up in the hype and noise - it'll only leave you feeling even more confused and lost - this means AI this, AI that, agent this, MCP that 2. Get your technical SEO in the best shape possible, maximise accessibility to anything accessing your content be it human or bot 3. Obsess over content creation - BUT, stop thinking of content as written text and start looking at creating "hybrid" content thats a mix of TEXT, IMAGE, VIDEO, INTERACTIVE TOOL 4. Use heatmap / click tracking tools to understand how users interact and continually shift/test content adjustments to improve "EXPECTED" outcomes - Google sees everything, let your users be the "strong" signal that you have something amazing to offer 5. Diversify your link building strategy - Stop buying shitty guest posts - Stop buying links off of wank link vendors (99% are gmail) - Get links from domains with real traffic - Stop focusing so much on link relevance - it's not as weighted as you think - Focus on getting links from domains that are naturally trusted - Do not pay attention to link metrics (DR/DA etc) - Pay attention to (projected domain traffic, quality of content) - Use social media to amplify amazing content - Use AI to create tools that encourage people to talk about your brand - Give people something for free that's of value 6. Build your brand - Good SEO should be supported by good brand sentiment - Respond to negative reviews - Track brand mentions and get involved in discussions - Encourage positive brand searches - Earn good reviews - Offer excellent support and genuinely care - Use social to "humanise" your brand - Don't just post what you think people want to see - Leverage video as much as possible 7. Maintain a healthy website index - Be proactive with non indexed content - Limit accessibility/indexing to non value or non essential content - Content no longer in demand? kill it (preserve link equity) - Get on top of relevant trending topics & maximise google discover util - Keep internal redirects out of your crawls - Avoid, neutralise, eliminate canonical childs - Noindex follow tags, pagination 8. Get involved in UGC - Build establilshment by being helpful - Use your brand to get involved but no shameless self promotion - Respond, get involved, offer useful insights and helpful content 9. Utilise Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster tools - Keep on top of index health - Monitor brand / non brand performance - Run periodic click gaps to catch decay - Periodically check on crawl stats - Ensure robots.txt 200 - Monitor page indexing state There's an LLM hype train right now and arguements over SEO, GEO etc. Instead of worrying about it and how to adopt vectorised cosine similarity, focus on what's always mattered, and thats your target audience. LLMS will find you. Always remember: LLMS need to consume content.

324

46 Comments

"SEO is dead" We are still doing the same fundamentals we were doing 12 months ago. The only difference is a slightly greater focus on PDP pages and merchant feed optimisations. AI achieves speed to market, but it doesn't magically make you rank higher. cc: Jason Mun Ash Fuller Nicholas Tie Sereena Furse Leslie Tan Judy Kim Darren H. Huang #seo #geo #chatgpt #searchengingoptimisation #results

82

20 Comments

So, we’re getting more confident that SEO isn’t dead (again), right? I joke, but it’s becoming clearer that “traditional” search results are important for more than just “traditional” search results (for now), which has calmed quite a few people down. Just to warn you, IT DOESN’T STOP THERE. No, I’m not coming to scare you unnecessarily, but understanding that Google/ChatGPT search results overlap is not the end of it. AI chatbots get used for more queries than “traditional” search does, so it is worth also considering that - unless you specifically invoke the “search” function - there’s a high chance that ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc, won’t be using those tools. Put simply, if ChatGPT doesn’t think the user query needs a fresh web search, it won’t make one. Then the closeness to Google’s own “traditional” results is less important. How might we understand this better? There are ways to check grounding with ChatGPT (it’s relatively easy), but not always simple to do at scale. So Dan (again) has released something that is super interesting > https://buff.ly/29ikuQG Alongside the blog, he has released the following: https://buff.ly/9Zntn7w <- Trained on ChatGPT data https://buff.ly/mUOJrM0 <- Trained on Google’s classifier data I need to run some more detailed testing to see how “accurate” these are and whether or not this kind data needs updating overtime, BUT if you want to get an idea for how many prompts/queries are likely to need “traditional” search results to assist either ChatGPT or Google in generating results, this is a great place to start. If grounding ISN’T likely to happen, it means you’re relying more on the original training data and the understanding the LLM has of the concept. If it IS likely to happen, that means fresh results are likely to play a more significant part.

33

5 Comments

What goes into rebuilding the UK’s biggest blinds site: They’re moving from WordPress to Webflow. But this is way more than just a platform change. Here’s what we’re focusing on: - Repositioning the brand for where they are right now - Improving the structure so the site flows naturally - Planning for scale to keep evolving - Refining UX for a clear journey The screenshot below shows part of our planning stage. This is where the heavy lifting happens: - Deciding what stays and goes - Mapping the user flows - Defining hierarchy It’s the difference between a site that looks good (and one that keeps bringing in new business)

27

9 Comments

The JBH Link Mapper. What it is, what it does, and how it works for SEO and Digital PR (and GEO). Of all the tools I've been involved in building at JBH, the LinkMapper is one of my favourites. The reason it's my favourite is that it displays inbound links exactly as they should be displayed. This builds on the work by Albert-László Barabási in his famous book, Linked. The link mapper shows you the pages that act as hubs. These are popular pages of a website that gain links, and hubs show popularity. Ideally, your business's core assets should be the most popular. The problem is we live in an era of attention starvation. As a result, many of a brand’s core services, products, or category pages are starved of the necessary links and brand mentions they need for success. Which is where digital PR comes in. Digital PR is the manual process of generating links and brand mentions. And highly skilled digital PR builds these links and brand mentions to the core pages of a business, which are starved of link equity. In some highly competitive environments, adding new links and brand mentions gives almost instantaneous ranking increases leading to revenue. But that's not all. We've seen that the impact of brand mentions and links also leads to near-immediate revenue increases. The reason for this is that in the market, prospects are exposed repeatedly (through high-quality journalism) to a brand's positioning and expertise. Essentially, you're using digital PR to remind people you exist. This is like advertising, content marketing and link building rolled into one. As we move into an AI-powered search era, we already know that digital PR drives almost 75% of success in GEO (generative engine optimisation). The link mapper enables our team to quickly identify and visualise low-quality hubs by categorising links based on domain authority. Using a colour-coded system that works on domain authority, we can see pages that have lots of high-quality links and pages that have weak ones. Because the internet is a free-scaling network, links dissolve over time. Websites get deleted, links get deleted, web pages get deleted. This means you need to regularly update the brand mentions and links related to your brand's most valuable or key assets. Additionally, creating separate assets that become hubs of popularity in their own right can help drive internal links to your core page. An old-fashioned but still hugely successful SEO technique. The map serves as a quick signpost, allowing you to understand the ecology of your website. And it allows you to understand the extent of publicity your brand has gained. In other words, it allows you to quickly gauge your business's 'popularity', as more popular businesses tend to attract more links. I'm going to be writing a more detailed post on this for my newsletter this week. I think you'll love the deep dive. Stay tuned.

33

8 Comments

🚨 Another Turning Point in Spam SEO Negative SEO is on the rise and working. Spam networks are trying to poison existing organically ranking sites and Google has no current response! They poison your link profile allowing their cleaner looking spam sites to rank ahead of you. Gary Illyes (From Google) has been dismissive of this in the past claiming he's checked 1000s of examples and could only find 1 that "might" have been negative SEO. I can show you EVERY site in my target searches has been affected! And that 1 that might have worked, means it works! https://lnkd.in/eTTHS_Mu If you're seeing this chart pattern more and more in your link profile, you need to post your examples and tag Gary. Google got rid of the Search Liaison role, so what else are we supposed to do? The current spam algorithm update DOES NOT include link spam as part of its rollout, so these are not being addressed. Don't sit there thinking someone else will sort this for you. I've been contacted multiple times about similar patterns. This is no longer an isolated problem - its happening to everyone!

138

76 Comments

Embeddings – Is This the Future of Redirect Mapping? If embeddings can reduce the manual work involved in site migrations (just like fuzzy did), it’s something worth further testing. Redirect mapping has always been one of those tedious but necessary parts of technical SEO. Whether it’s a site migration, a rebrand, or restructuring URLs, ensuring that old pages correctly point to their new equivalents. Traditional redirect mapping is often a blend of automation and manual checking. The usual techniques include: * Exact match redirects for URLs that follow a predictable pattern * Fuzzy matching to compare URL similarity based on text comparisons * Manual review where automation fails Read more >> https://lnkd.in/eufvydZg (Python script included)

30

2 Comments

2 weeks ago I asked you which current SEO malpractice is in your opinions the absolutely worst! And we got a clear winner - Negative SEO attacks - let's talk about them Negative SEO attacks on your competitors are a nasty practice and can come in different shapes and forms: 1.) 'oldie but goodie' - massive amounts of bad links directed to your website - nowadays we are seeing 'telegram links' with anchor such as 'Blackhat SEO' or 'Black Hat SEO, Google SEO fast ranking' and more I know many will hate this opinion, but disavow is still your friend! Disavow the horrid links slowly and and keep your BL profile clean. I know you will argue that Google recognised bad links, but sadly these attacks still exist and still work. 2.) DMCA take downs - new favourite - basically your nasty competitor submits DMCA and your website temporarily disappears from SERPs - https://lnkd.in/detwRQsv 3.) Brandjacking - this is really common. Basically, someone buys a domain with your banded name and ranks it and steals your organic traffic. Many times they abuse your logo & graphics as well. You can protect yourself with with Brand protection - block the SERPs with your branded sites! 4.) Code injections - this is a tricky one. Basically competitors will find any weak spot and launch their attack. This can be in shape of 1000s of 404s pages, weaponizing your crawling and more. To prevent this you need to make your site security more robust and work with your devs and server people. I truly hope you will not experience any of these but the chances are, that if you are in the iGaming niche and your are successful, someone will try to take you down one way or another.

50

16 Comments

This is how we got 3,848 additional enquiries for a medical practice website that was dead in the water. This client had been through multiple SEO consultants since 2016 and watched their website stagnate for 3 straight years. When they came to us, their site was a wasteland of cowboy SEO tactics. Content hadn't been updated since 2011. Service pages were living in complete isolation from each other. Plus they had all the usual technical problems. Yeeeeee haaaawwww 🤠. But when we were doing out initial audit and strategy session we discovered the business owner had a really strong personal profile in his field. Published works, industry recognition, the lot. And the website wasn't leveraging any of it. So we went to work on the fundamentals: ✅ Made it easy for Google Fixed broken links, redirect chains, page speed issues - all the technical stuff that stops Google from properly crawling the site. ✅ Connected the content Service pages were ranking poorly because they weren't linked to anything else on the site. We organized everything into proper content groups and connected them with internal links. ✅ Leveraged his expertise Added him as the author of his own content and chased down links from his previously published works that weren't connected to the site. ✅ Updated content Some content was over a decade old. We pulled every page into a database, did proper keyword research using Search Console data, and rewrote it all with Surfer optimization. ✅ Won big links Used digital PR to land links from Telegraph and Independent so we had massive trust signals that helped break through Google's higher trust requirements for health sites. The result after 12 months? 414% growth in organic visitors and 3,848 additional enquiries. But the thing that stands out for me in this case study is how the business owners expertise and authority was being completely ignored. This guy had genuine expertise and industry recognition that his website was completely failing to showcase. It’s MENTAL that this wasn’t front and centre on the site. That’s got nothing to do with SEO strategies. It’s basic human nature that we respond to authority and expertise. And in the medical field that’s top of the list when it comes to what customers need to trust you enough to enquire about your services.

22

9 Comments

🕵️ 𝟵𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗘𝗢𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗛𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗼𝘄 𝗙𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗚𝗦𝗖 I was doing a site audit recently for a client who insisted they had removed their disavow file months ago. Everything seemed clean, until I checked across all their Google Search Console (GSC) properties. I found a disavow file in a non-primary property (http version) that had been untouched for years. That one hidden file was still influencing how Google treated inbound links. This scenario highlights a deeper truth about disavow files. They’re often misunderstood, mishandled, or forgotten entirely and that can quietly harm your SEO. 🔍 Why hidden disavow files are dangerous and how they work A disavow file uploaded to one property (e.g. https://www.yoursite.com) does not automatically apply to http://yoursite.com or subdomain.yoursite.com. If you forget to delete or check those, they may still be active. Many SEOs clean up only the obvious (https, “www”) property. Hidden files in other versions remain “active but forgotten.” ✅ What you should do  • Audit all GSC properties Don’t stop at https://www. check http://, non-www, subdomains, and any legacy versions for disavow files.  • Remove or unify disavow files For most sites, have one canonical disavow file (if needed), and remove duplicates or hidden ones in other property versions.  • Document everything Maintain a log of what disavow files exist, when they were created or removed, and under which property. This helps future audits avoid surprises.  • Monitor effects carefully After cleanup, track backlinks, traffic, rankings. Hidden disavow files might have been suppressing link authority. You may see recovery from restoration.  • Disavow the disavow tool Bing already removed the tool in 2023 and Google has hinted they might follow and remove the tool as well. But as of now, it’s still there buried in Google Search Console. SEO isn’t just about what you see today, often the biggest issues are hidden behind the scenes. A forgotten disavow file in the wrong GSC property may be silently suppressing your link equity. #seo #technicalseo #linkbuilding #searchconsole

19

6 Comments