Blog category
SEO Automation Guides
Pipelines for research, briefs, drafting, internal links and AI visibility. 26 guides, written by me from project work.
AI Brand Monitoring: Tracking What AI Assistants Say About YouAI brand monitoring means regularly asking AI assistants about your business, comparing what they say with the facts, and tracing every error back to the source it came from. It's about accuracy and reputation, not just whether you get mentioned.6 min readAI Content Quality Checklist: 24 Checks Before You PublishThis AI content quality checklist gives you 24 checks to run on every AI-assisted draft before it goes live, grouped into six areas: accuracy, substance, intent, wording, metadata and the rest of your site.7 min readAI Visibility Metrics: What to Measure and What to IgnoreAI visibility metrics measure how often AI tools mention your brand, cite your website and describe you accurately when buyers ask questions. Five of them are worth tracking; most single visibility scores are not.6 min readAre Paid Business Directories Worth It for SEO?Short answer: rarely for SEO, sometimes for sales. Paid business directories are worth it when buyers in your market actually use them and your competitors are listed there. The link alone is almost never worth the money.8 min readCan AI Write SEO Content That Ranks? An Honest AnswerShort answer: yes, AI can write SEO content that ranks - as a first draft. What it can't do is check its own facts, add experience it doesn't have, or decide what your buyers need to hear.6 min readCompetitor Backlink Analysis: How to Find Links You Can WinCompetitor backlink analysis means studying who links to the sites that outrank you, then sorting those links by how they were earned. The goal is not to copy every link. It is to find the ones you could realistically win too.7 min readContent Brief Template: The Fields Every SEO Brief NeedsBelow is the content brief template I use, laid out as a table you can copy straight into a document: 22 fields in five blocks, each with a note on what to write and a filled-in example. After it come variants for new articles, service pages and page refreshes.7 min readGoogle Helpful Content Guidelines, Explained for Content TeamsThe Google helpful content guidelines are a Search Central page of self-assessment questions about whether content is made for people or for rankings. There is no checklist to pass and no separate helpful content system any more: since March 2024 the ideas sit inside Google's core ranking systems.8 min readHow to Automate Content Briefs From the Pages That RankTo automate content briefs, script the evidence work: collect the pages ranking for a keyword, fetch them, strip navigation and footers, convert what is left to markdown and assemble it into one document. Then draft the brief from that evidence and review it yourself.6 min readHow to Automate Keyword Research Without Losing JudgementTo automate keyword research, script the collection and filtering but keep the decisions: profile the business, agree the pages, pull keywords through cached API calls, filter them against hard rules, check intent, then review the list yourself.7 min readHow to Avoid Keyword Cannibalisation When Planning ContentThe surest way to avoid keyword cannibalisation is to decide which page owns each search intent before anything is written, then check every new idea against your existing pages and the live results. Fixing it after publishing is slower and costs you rankings in the meantime.6 min readHow to Do a Content Gap Analysis That Finds Real OpportunitiesTo do a content gap analysis, collect the topics your search competitors cover, remove everything your site already has, plans or is drafting, and keep only ideas that will not compete with your own pages. Then check demand before anyone writes a word.7 min readHow to Do SEO Competitor Analysis Without Drowning in DataTo do SEO competitor analysis, pick the sites that actually outrank you, list every page they have, see which of those pages rank, then study how their site is organised, what content formats they use and who links to them. Questions first, data second.6 min readHow to Edit AI Content So It Reads Like an Expert Wrote ItTo edit AI content well, work in passes from big to small: check the draft against the brief, verify every claim, cut what says nothing, add what only an expert would know, then fix voice, headings and metadata. Line editing a draft with the wrong structure or false facts is wasted effort.7 min readHow to Find Competitor Keywords Worth TargetingTo find competitor keywords worth targeting, export what each rival ranks for, strip out brand and junk terms, compare the rest with your own Search Console queries, and keep only terms that several competitors share and that fit a page you sell from.7 min readHow to Find Directory Listing Opportunities Your Competitors Already UseThe fastest way to find directory listing opportunities is to copy your market: collect the sites linking to the competitors who outrank you, keep the ones that accept business listings, and rank them by how many competitors they list.6 min readHow to Find Every Page on a Competitor WebsiteTo find all pages on a competitor website, start with the XML sitemaps listed in their robots.txt, expand every child sitemap, then add the pages a rankings tool sees and the pages a crawler can reach. No single source is complete, so you combine three.6 min readHow to Find Internal Linking Opportunities at Scale (8 Steps)To find internal linking opportunities at scale, crawl your whole site, strip out menu and footer links, count the body links pointing at each important page, then look for missing pairings and unlinked mentions. Here's the process step by step.7 min readHow to Track Your Brand Visibility in AI Search (7 Steps)To track brand visibility in AI search, ask the AI tools your buyers use a fixed set of real buyer questions, save every answer, and log whether your brand is mentioned or cited. Then repeat the same set on a schedule and compare.7 min readInternal Linking Strategy for Service and E-commerce SitesAn internal linking strategy is a set of rules for which pages on your site link to which, and with what anchor text, so visitors and search engines reach your most important pages easily and understand how they relate.10 min readKeyword Clustering Methods Compared: SERP Overlap vs SemanticKeyword clustering methods fall into two camps: SERP overlap, which groups keywords Google answers with the same pages, and semantic, which groups keywords that mean similar things. Use SERP overlap to decide pages and semantic grouping to sort big lists cheaply.8 min readKeyword Gap Analysis: How to Find What Competitors Rank ForA keyword gap analysis compares your rankings with those of a few search competitors and lists the queries where they appear and you do not, or where you trail far behind. The export is the easy part. The value comes from cleaning it, sorting each keyword into missing or weak, and deciding which page should own it.8 min readLink Prospecting: How to Build a List of Sites Worth ContactingLink prospecting is the research step of link building: finding websites that could plausibly link to you, checking each one is worth a link, and recording why they would link and how to reach them. Outreach only works as well as the list behind it.7 min readOrphan Pages: What They Are and How to Find and Fix ThemAn orphan page is a live page on your website that no other page on the same site links to. Visitors can't click their way to it, and search engines can only find it through a sitemap, an outside link or an old crawl.8 min readSearch Intent Classification at Scale: Labelling Thousands of KeywordsSearch intent classification at scale works in two passes: cheap rules on the keyword wording give every term a first guess, then live search results decide the label for the terms that matter. Anything the two passes disagree on goes to a person.8 min readWhat to Include in an SEO Content Brief: A 23-Point ChecklistHere is what to include in an SEO content brief: one keyword and its intent, evidence from the pages that rank, a full outline, the proof only your business can add, and the links, schema and call to action the page needs. Twenty-three checks, grouped into five parts.8 min read
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Competitor Analysis Automation
Competitor sitemaps joined with ranking data into a URL map per rival, with site structure, typed content and backlink gaps laid out in one research sheet.
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A staged keyword pipeline from your business profile and approved pages to validated keywords routed to a money page or the blog plan, approved by me.
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Harvests your site and competitors, excludes everything live, planned or drafted, and proposes new topics that will not cannibalise the pages you already have.
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A scraper that captures the full text of every page ranking for your keyword, hidden panels included, and turns it into a competitor document and a page brief.
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Drafting guided by measured playbooks per content type, checked by an audit script and validators, then edited and approved by me before anything is published.
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A crawl of your whole site that tags every link by position, classifies page roles and returns a ranked P1-P3 spreadsheet of linking fixes your team can work through.
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A pipeline that finds the directories and listing sites your competitors use, checks which accept submissions and at what cost, and ranks them by competitor overlap.
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Real buyer prompts run through Google AI results, Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude in a real browser, with a screenshot, the answer and a named or cited verdict per prompt.
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A 30-minute call, no pitch deck. Tell me where you are stuck and I will tell you honestly whether I can help - and if I cannot, who can.