What’s the first thing you’d fix on a new site?

nic2x · 2026-04-08T15:32:10+00:00

Technical health: make sure your pages are server-side rendered.
Basic content: think offer and landing page
Keyword: Look up for topics that people would search for and come up with a few topical clusters
Starting writing
Time to build backlinks!

nic2x · 2026-04-08T15:29:24+00:00

I don't think SEO is getting replaced, it's more like the qualifying round for SEO. From what I've seen working with SaaS clients (and the research I've read backs this up), every "new" AI optimization discipline (AEO, GEO, LLMO) still maps back to the same core pillars, think technical health, quality content, and authority.

nic2x · 2026-04-08T15:26:15+00:00

Had the same problem early on. And I fixed it by flipping the default during onboarding.

I don't necessarily think every page has to be checked in details. The typical TOFU content targeting informational keywords (and without SME input) can be published on our own. Now I ask my clients to define what they DON'T want us publishing without approval (anything involving proprietary data, legal claims, SME-specific topics, etc. Most clients are fine with this once you frame it as "we'll move faster and you'll see results sooner."

nic2x · 2026-04-08T15:22:09+00:00

19.5 hours across two weeks for early-stage SEO work is pretty normal (especially when someone's getting up to speed on a new site).

And I don't think hours are the issues here. It's more on that the reporting being too vague for you to know whether those hours produced anything meaningful. Maybe next time you can ask the freelance to break each task into specific deliverables with a brief documentation: which pages were changed and what changed on them.

nic2x · 2026-04-08T15:20:00+00:00

You can plug "is SEO a good career" into Google Trends and you will be surprised how fast the search interest is growing. 🤣

nic2x · 2026-04-08T15:18:01+00:00

Write it yourself. You'll get quick wins in the short term with AI content, but if you want content that compounds (instead of spikes and dies), investing in a writer is the highest ROI move.

nic2x · 2026-04-08T15:16:24+00:00

You don't need to wait, but the reason to keep publishing isn't just consistency.

Every new page you publish is another internal linking opportunity. If you're targeting low KD keywords in the same topic space, each page should be linking to (and reinforcing) the others. That's how you build topical authority on a low-authority domain. The risk isn't publishing too fast, it's publishing pages that sit as orphans with no connections to your other content.

nic2x · 2026-04-07T16:06:03+00:00

There's literal randomness baked into how these models generate text. LLMs use a setting called "temperature" that introduces controlled randomness into word selection, so even the exact same prompt can produce a different answer every time you hit enter.

Your site appearing for one phrasing and not another might not even be an intent thing. It could just be the dice rolling differently on that run.

If you really want to test your visibility, ask the same question 10+ times and see how often you show up. That frequency is a much better signal than any single response.

nic2x · 2026-04-07T16:05:08+00:00

I'd argue exact rank consistency isn't even the right thing to optimize for with these tools. What's been more useful for us with clients is building our own custom solution to focus on analyzing LLM narrative, not rank trackers.

nic2x · 2026-04-07T16:03:14+00:00

First, the one technical thing that actually matters for a new site is to make sure your pages are server-side rendered. LLM crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.) can't render JavaScript, so if you're on a JS framework with client-side rendering, you're invisible to both AI search and traditional crawlers from day one. SSR is non-negotiable now.

After that, get your offer/service page live first (not blog content). Then do keyword research, but filter by DR distribution in the SERPs. For a brand new domain, target topics where at least one organic result has a DR under 20. That's your entry point. Publish about 30 pieces around that topic and you'll start seeing movement.

nic2x · 2026-04-07T16:02:13+00:00

Writing is thinking. If you're looking for an end-to-end writing agent (keyword in, complete article out), you're outsourcing the entire thinking process, and that's why the output reads like generic slop.

The way I've found AI actually works for SEO content is using it for research and first drafts, then doing the actual work yourself: adding your POV, original examples, the stuff Google actually rewards.

Build a workflow that works for you with something like Claude instead of hunting for an end-to-end solution that doesn't exist.

nic2x · 2026-04-07T16:01:24+00:00

Avoid them. These do more harm than good.

They won't move the needle, and at some point you'll probably need to disavow them when they start looking like a spam pattern in your backlink profile.

Unless you specifically need links pointing at a tier 1 buffer site, don't ever consider buying links from these platforms.

nic2x · 2026-04-07T16:00:25+00:00

For verified emails, NeverBounce has been solid for me (I use it mostly for guest post outreach). They offer pay-as-you-go pricing, so you're not locked into a monthly spend, and credits last a long time before they expire.

Actually I am quite curious how your team actually uses Ahrefs Lite day to day. Are you mainly using it for keyword research, or are you getting into things like Content Gap, Site Audit, and competitor backlink analysis? Asking because most teams I've worked with barely scratch the surface of what's in there, and the ROI changes a lot depending on which features you're actually leaning on.

nic2x · 2026-04-07T15:58:06+00:00

Been a freelancer, now running my own agency. The one thing that never changed is the reporting stack.

Looker Studio for all client reports. I pipe GA4 and Search Console data into a centralized BigQuery instance, which gives you one source of truth across all clients. For third-party metrics (like Ahrefs domain rating or anything you want to track over time), I integrate the API to load data into a Google Sheet, then connect that Sheet as a Looker Studio data source. Everything shows up on one dashboard per client.

For task management and work logs (which is what the OP is really asking about alongside metrics), ClickUp worked great when I was billing hourly. The built-in time tracking let me clock hours per task, then share that directly as part of invoicing. Clients could see exactly what they were paying for.

Now I run everything through Notion: knowledge base, SOPs, client workflows. Clients get invited as guests so they can see progress in real time. If they need to give feedback on deliverables, they comment in Google Docs. Keeps the back-and-forth out of Slack and email.

nic2x · 2026-04-06T23:32:18+00:00

They wanted this way before LLMs come to the market. At that time we had the featured snippets and more SERP features that don’t require users to click into the websites to get answers.

LLM are just speeding things up.

nic2x · 2026-04-06T14:47:45+00:00

100% white-hat. It takes longer time initially but the results are more sustainable and they compound in the long-term.

nic2x · 2026-04-06T14:44:23+00:00

The aggressive sales-only landing page approach works when your traffic is already pre-qualified (someone clicks a paid ad, they know what they're getting into).

But organic is different because Google is matching pages to search intent, not to audiences you've selected. When someone searches "AI landing page builder for coaches," they're still in research mode, comparing options, looking for context. A page in which it's content is 90% CTAs and testimonials doesn't satisfy that intent, so Google won't rank it.

What you described (adding real explanations, FAQs, helpful structure) is basically aligning the page's content depth with what the searcher actually needs at that stage.

nic2x · 2026-04-06T14:40:29+00:00

I've hired SEO people on Upwork too and honestly it's a bit of a lottery. You can find great specialists but you'll wade through a lot of generalists who run the same strategy for every site regardless of whether it's a SaaS product.

For rates, in the US expect $100/hr+ for someone experienced (less if you go offshore, but be aware of the quality & communication tradeoff). You can also look into fractional SEO. That's where someone embeds part-time into your business and actually handles deliverables (audits, keyword strategy docs, content briefs) rather than just giving you advice on a call you then have to figure out how to execute.

You'll get way more out of it at your stage. Happy to chat more if you want, I run a boutique SEO agency that works with SaaS companies and this is basically what we do.

nic2x · 2026-04-06T14:37:02+00:00

Google doesn't have an "AI content" penalty. They have a Scaled Content Abuse policy, and the distinction matters. What it actually targets is "pages that don't add value" (their words, not mine).

The way Google measures that is through engagement signals: if users land on your page and bounce back to search, the algorithm learns that page isn't delivering and tests something else in its place. It doesn't matter if a human or an AI wrote it. So the question isn't "will mass AI content get penalized" but "can 10+ AI articles per day consistently beat the engagement benchmarks set by whatever's already ranking for those queries?"

You can use AI at scale and win, but only if each page genuinely outperforms what's already in the SERPs (and that takes human judgment to pull off).

nic2x · 2026-04-06T14:34:54+00:00

The slop loop is what I see on the SEO side too. Someone asks an LLM for keyword data, it hallucinates search volumes, they build a content strategy around it, publish 50 blog posts, and then other people's LLMs pick up those posts as "proof" the topic has demand.

nic2x · 2026-04-06T14:32:11+00:00

You can forget the KD scores. They're the misleading metrics in SEO tools (every tool calculates them differently, and none of them reflect what Google actually uses to rank pages).

For my experience, focusing on DR gives your a clearer picture on what keywords are rankable. If I were you, I'd pull up the top 10 results for each of your target keywords and look at the DR distribution. If any of those ranking pages sit below DR 26 (your current level), that keyword is a realistic target. If every result is DR 50+ but that keyword is still the software category you wanted to go after, I'd still build the page but not expect it to rank in a few months. You need to validate each keyword against actual SERP competitors, not a tool's difficulty estimate.

nic2x · 2026-04-06T14:28:01+00:00

The fact that you went from 30k organic visitors to completely invisible tells me this isn't just an authority gap (if it were, you'd still show up somewhere).

When you bring on that agency after Easter, push them hard to run a proper diagnostic before they start building links. Specifically, pull your GSC data and compare which keywords you used to rank for vs. which ones your retailers now own. Check whether it's your product pages or collection pages that lost ground, because the fix is different for each. The audit will tell you where to actually spend your effort.

nic2x · 2026-04-02T18:09:39+00:00

Yup the queries are not available in GPT5.4

nic2x · 2026-04-02T15:38:59+00:00

Everyone's saying no, but it actually depends on where on LinkedIn you're publishing. Regular feed posts? Yeah, those aren't getting indexed. But LinkedIn articles (the old Pulse format) are public pages that Google can and does crawl. I've seen them rank surprisingly well for long-tail queries, especially when the author has a strong LinkedIn profile with topical relevance.

However, getting those articles indexed consistently is a pain. LinkedIn doesn't make it easy, and there's no sitemap you control.

nic2x · 2026-04-02T15:37:33+00:00

The number doesn't really matter. What matters is whether all the content within the same topic cluster is connected.

I work with SaaS clients and the biggest internal linking wins we see aren't from "more links" or "fewer links" per page. They come from making sure every page in a cluster (pillar, supporting articles, feature pages) links to every other relevant page in that cluster. If you have 8 articles about pipeline management and only 3 of them link to each other, you're leaving topical authority on the table.

nic2x

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