Eric Richmond is a (recovering) rock and roll roadie and President of Expert SEO Consulting, a Connecticut-based digital marketing consultancy he founded in 2006. With nearly two decades focused on organic search, Eric now specializes in AI search optimization — helping businesses get cited and recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and other generative platforms. He is also the creator of CiteMetrix, an AI citation tracking platform, and Chatly, an AI-powered chatbot for WordPress. Before Expert SEO Consulting, Eric held senior roles at Complex Media, TechMediaNetwork, 360i, and Grey Interactive, and has spoken on search optimization at SMX, SES, HSMAI, and MTMP. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Internet Oldtimers Foundation and is a founding Board Member of the US Internet Pioneers Foundation. A lifelong car enthusiast, Eric is the founder of Cars and Coffee Darien — held at the historic starting line of the 1979 Cannonball Run — and Cars and Coffee Events, the largest car and motorcycle event listing website in the US. He is an accredited member of the International Motor Press Association, and on weekends you can often find him and his Mazda Miata on the track at Lime Rock Park.
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.
Google's algorithm volatility has reached unprecedented levels in 2025, with 58% of businesses experiencing significant ranking fluctuations in the past quarter alone. If your Connecticut business has watched its search visibility swing wildly: sometimes dropping 30+ positions overnight: you're not imagining things. The search landscape has fundamentally changed, and traditional SEO strategies are no longer…
Here's the reality: 87% of B2B buyers start their purchasing journey with generic, informational searches: yet most businesses are competing for the same bottom-funnel keywords while completely ignoring this massive opportunity at the top of the sales funnel. The traditional approach to SEO targeting is fundamentally broken. Companies obsess over high-intent, low-volume keywords like "buy…