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 a number that should make every SEO professional pause: 73% of websites have critical technical issues that silently sabotage their search visibility. The problem isn't awareness: most marketers know audits matter. The problem is time. Manual site audits consume hours, sometimes days, leaving teams reactive instead of strategic. In 2026, that excuse no longer…
You’ve worked your behind off to get your website to the top of Google’s rankings. But while 96% of AI citations come from sources with strong E-E-A-T signals, most top-ranking pages lack the structural architecture AI systems need to extract and cite them. Your rankings dashboard might look pristine, but in the world of AI-powered search:…
What is Robots.txt? (The Gatekeeper of Your Website) Think of your robots.txt file as the security guard at your office building. Just as a security guard decides who can enter which floors and areas, robots.txt tells search engine crawlers (like Google’s bots) which parts of your website they can and cannot access. A robots.txt file is a…
Here's the thing nobody's talking about: ChatGPT just got a lot more comfortable for the average user, and that should terrify anyone who's been relying on traditional search traffic. OpenAI recently rolled out Top Stories and visual knowledge panels inside ChatGPT, making the interface look less like a blank conversation window and more like… well,…
Here's the thing: 65% of Google searches now end without a click. Users get their answers directly from featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, and AI-generated summaries. If your content isn't structured to deliver instant, authoritative answers, you're invisible where it matters most. The shift isn't coming: it's already here. Search engines and AI platforms…
Here's the thing about service pages in 2026: they're no longer being read primarily by humans making buying decisions. They're being evaluated by AI agents determining whether you're worth surfacing to those humans in the first place. Google's SAGE (Search-Augmented Generation Engine) project has fundamentally changed how search works. Instead of matching keywords and ranking…
If you monitor your rankings closely (and you should), you probably noticed something on January 29-30. Rankings shifted. Sometimes dramatically. Search Engine Roundtable and the usual monitoring tools lit up with chatter about volatility spikes. But here's the thing: Google's rankings fluctuate constantly. The algorithm tests variations, personalizes results, adjusts for location and device, and…
Search has fundamentally changed. By 2026, over 60% of search queries will be answered directly by AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews: without users ever clicking through to websites. This isn't a distant possibility; it's happening now. The problem? Most content wasn't built for AI consumption. Traditional SEO audits focus on keyword…
The digital marketing landscape has fundamentally shifted, and here’s the data that proves it: 65% of AI chatbot conversations have absolutely nothing to do with buying anything. This isn’t speculation: it’s the hard reality uncovered by Dan Petrovic’s comprehensive December 2025 analysis of 3.9 million AI conversation turns. For SEO professionals and content marketers, this…
Brand mentions are no longer just a nice-to-have metric for your marketing dashboard. With 85% of searches now happening through AI-powered engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews, unlinked brand mentions have become the primary currency for digital visibility. Here's the reality: if AI models aren't referencing your brand in their responses, you're essentially…