Eric Richmond a photographer, a [recovering] rock and roll roadie and Founder of Expert SEO Consulting. A 25 year veteran of digital marketing, he has focused on SEO since 2007 and has spoken on the subject at SMX, SES and HSMAI. He is on the Board of Directors of the Internet Oldtimers Foundation and the US Internet Pioneers Foundation. Eric is also a life long car enthusiast, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Valley Region of the Porsche Club of America where he is also Editor of Challenge - the Club's monthly magazine.
Here's the brutal truth: 73% of businesses are still paying for outdated SEO strategies that won't work in the age of AI search. While you're burning budget on keyword rankings that matter less each month, your competitors are optimizing for ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity: where your customers are actually finding answers. If your…
Here's the reality: 70% of marketers actively invest in content marketing, yet only 29% of B2B organizations report having a documented content strategy. This gap represents a massive opportunity: and it's exactly where thought leadership content becomes your competitive advantage. Thought leadership is no longer optional for businesses serious about building authority online. It's the…
Want to build an unstoppable in-house SEO team? Get a step-by-step guide on consulting, training, and making your business the master of its own search destiny. Here’s the reality: 68% of companies that invest in building internal SEO capabilities see 40% better long-term results than those relying solely on external agencies. The shift toward in-house…
AI bots are crawling your website right now, and you probably don’t even know it. While traditional search engine crawlers like Googlebot have been on SEO professionals’ radar for decades, a new generation of artificial intelligence crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and other AI platforms are silently consuming your content for training data, real-time citations,…
73% of websites that experience sudden traffic drops never fully recover their rankings. That's not because recovery is impossible: it's because most business owners approach traffic loss the wrong way. They panic, make random changes, or worse, ignore the problem hoping it'll fix itself. Here's the thing: when your organic traffic tanks, you need forensic…
Here's the harsh reality: 58.5% of Google searches now end without a single click. Users are finding what they need directly on search results pages through AI-generated summaries, completely bypassing traditional websites. If your SEO strategy still revolves around driving traffic to your site, you're optimizing for a world that no longer exists. The shift…
Google’s AI Overviews dominate the research phase, but traditional search results still drive the actual sales. Recent data from BrightEdge reveals a clear division in how consumers navigate their buying journey: and understanding this split is no longer optional for businesses that want to stay competitive. The Research vs. Sales Reality AI Overvivers have become…
The death of SEO has been greatly exaggerated. While 34% of businesses report decreased click-through rates from Google's AI Overviews, and zero-click searches now account for nearly 65% of all queries, traditional SEO services aren't dying: they're undergoing the most fundamental transformation in the industry's 25-year history. Here's what's actually happening: SEO is evolving, not…
Google has quietly launched one of its most ambitious AI tools yet: and it's creating waves across the digital marketing world. Opal, a no-code AI application builder, promises to help businesses "create optimized content in a scalable way." But here's where it gets interesting: Google's own marketing language for Opal appears to directly contradict their…
AI now influences 58% of Google searches and voice queries exceed 50%. Relying on SEO alone is no longer optional. To stay visible and keep a predictable pipeline, you must integrate three pillars—SEO (rankings and traffic), AEO (zero-click answers), and GEO (AI citations). This post explains what changed, what to prioritize next, and where to start.