SEO INSIGHTS, GUIDES AND TACTICS
Plain-language SEO and AI search analysis from 25 years of getting sites found. New posts most weeks.
Complete the Google Analytics 4 configuration to measure the impact of the MUVERA algorithm on your content performance. Why MUVERA Tracking Matters for Marketing Teams…
When Google announced MUVERA in June 2025 I went looking for everything I could find on it, the research paper, the technical documentation, the early…
Most of the sites I audit that are struggling to rank have decent content. The problem is usually that Google doesn’t trust the source. E-E-A-T…
AI-First Indexing: GEO & AEO Matter More Than Ever The June 2025 Google Core update strengthens the importance of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer…
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The June 2025 Core Update was the first major update to incorporate MUVERA at scale. I tracked it closely across client sites and wrote this…
AI Overviews started appearing at the top of UK Google search results in late 2024. By early 2025 they were showing on a meaningful proportion…
A client forwarded me a ChatGPT screenshot a while back. Someone had typed “SEO consultant in Bath” into ChatGPT and seoburf.com came up in the…
The choice between sprint SEO and a monthly retainer is not really about which model is better in the abstract. It is about which one…
Sprint SEO is the engagement model I use instead of open-ended monthly retainers. The premise is simple: define a specific scope of work, deliver it…
The SEO plugin you choose for WordPress matters less than how consistently you use it. I have seen sites ranking well with Yoast, Rank Math,…
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs on your site and tells search engines which pages you want crawled and indexed. Robots.txt…
Core Web Vitals became a confirmed Google ranking signal in 2021. Three years later, the majority of sites I audit are still failing at least…
Crawl errors are one of those technical issues that look minor in a report but compound over time. A 404 that nobody redirected. A redirect…
Complete the Google Analytics 4 configuration to measure the impact of the MUVERA algorithm on your content performance. Why MUVERA Tracking Matters for Marketing Teams Google’s MUVERA algorithm rewards comprehensive, multi-intent content and penalises surface-level pages. Standard GA4 metrics won’t show you the specific user behaviours that indicate MUVERA success. This guide helps you track … Read more
When Google announced MUVERA in June 2025 I went looking for everything I could find on it, the research paper, the technical documentation, the early analysis. Not long after, I noticed a drop in rankings for AS3 Performance, a client site. I had a strong suspicion about the cause. After implementing structural changes based on … Read more
Most of the sites I audit that are struggling to rank have decent content. The problem is usually that Google doesn’t trust the source. E-E-A-T is Google’s framework for assessing whether it should. Get it wrong and it doesn’t matter how well-written your pages are. E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It comes … Read more
AI-First Indexing: GEO & AEO Matter More Than Ever The June 2025 Google Core update strengthens the importance of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). In plain terms, Google increasingly summarises answers using AI models, drawing from semantically structured content (your site content). I have been pushing clients for the past 12 … Read more
The June 2025 Core Update was the first major update to incorporate MUVERA at scale. I tracked it closely across client sites and wrote this summary as the rollout was happening. The pattern that emerged was consistent: sites with fragmented single-intent content took the biggest hits, and sites with strong E-E-A-T signals recovered fastest. What … Read more
AI Overviews started appearing at the top of UK Google search results in late 2024. By early 2025 they were showing on a meaningful proportion of informational and how-to searches. The immediate question from most of my clients was the same: are these taking our traffic? The honest answer is: sometimes yes, sometimes no, and … Read more
A client forwarded me a ChatGPT screenshot a while back. Someone had typed “SEO consultant in Bath” into ChatGPT and seoburf.com came up in the response. That was the first time I’d seen it happen with my own site, and it raised an obvious question, why that page, and what put it there? The honest … Read more
The choice between sprint SEO and a monthly retainer is not really about which model is better in the abstract. It is about which one is appropriate for what you actually need. Most of the time, when a business asks me whether they should use a retainer, the answer is that they should not, at … Read more
Sprint SEO is the engagement model I use instead of open-ended monthly retainers. The premise is simple: define a specific scope of work, deliver it in full within a fixed timeframe, then evaluate what to do next based on results. No rolling commitment. No monthly fee for ambiguous “ongoing optimisation”. A clear job, done properly, … Read more
The SEO plugin you choose for WordPress matters less than how consistently you use it. I have seen sites ranking well with Yoast, Rank Math, and SEOPress, and I have seen sites ranking poorly with all three. The plugin does not do the SEO, it gives you the infrastructure to do it yourself. That said, … Read more
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs on your site and tells search engines which pages you want crawled and indexed. Robots.txt is a separate file that tells crawlers which parts of your site to stay out of. Together they control a significant part of how Google navigates your site, and on … Read more
Core Web Vitals became a confirmed Google ranking signal in 2021. Three years later, the majority of sites I audit are still failing at least one of the three metrics, and in most cases, the same metric: LCP. Largest Contentful Paint measures how quickly the largest visible element loads, and on most WordPress sites, that … Read more
Crawl errors are one of those technical issues that look minor in a report but compound over time. A 404 that nobody redirected. A redirect chain that was never cleaned up after a migration. A page that got a noindex tag applied by mistake and has been invisible to Google for six months. These are … Read more