Building a simple and lovable SEO Analytics Tool (@SeoGets). Love God, my family, disc golf, and wrestling.
Cookeville, TN
Joined January 2023
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Or just use @seogets for free (GSC tool that's 10x better) that already has dark mode. :)
Dark mode coming to Google Search Console
seroundtable.com/google-sear…
Matthew Mellinger retweeted
It's kind of crazy that Tech SEO Connect is one month away and we haven't even announced it. We'll be in Durham, NC on November 5th-6th.
Early ticket sales have never been this strong. People want to come back, which is awesome! I guess that's what happens in year 3 when you run an amazing and super fun conference.
We do want new people to come to the conference, so this is me saying get your tickets before they're gone. techseoconnect.com/
Man, I'm shocked with all the talk about a PBN (and I mean a public blog network, cause it's not even private anymore 💀) @outrank_so not being able to cause any harm.
People underestimate the potential impact of bad backlinks and blindly trust that Google can figure it out. 😅
Matthew Mellinger retweeted
I wanna share all my startup experience, one topic at a time,
Today it's ---SEO---
In the past years, I generated over 1B impressions and 1M clicks from SEO.
Everything I've done:
📁 Domain names
↳ Use: .com, .org, .dev, .ai, .io
↳ Use keyword-like naming, e.g. osssoftware dot org
↳ Max 14 letters in a domain name
↳ No “-” or “_”
↳ One topic per domain when possible
↳ Pick www or non-www and stick to that one version (one redirects to another one)
📁 Tech SEO
↳ Make sure the page renders HTML when bots make requests
↳ One way to check it:
↳ Drop your URL into Claude
↳ Ask if it’s doing everything right for tech SEO
↳ There are many more details, but really, Claude or Codex will lay it all down for you if you show it your website
↳ HTTPS on
↳ Mobile-friendly
↳ Fast enough that it doesn’t feel broken
↳ PageSpeed Insights is enough
↳ Open GSC web-vitals and if it's green then all good
↳ Short, stable URLs
↳ Url slug should match the meta title and h1
↳ No random strings
↳ One H1 per page
↳ Unique title + unique meta per page
↳ Image alt text on anything that matters
↳ Canonical URL on every indexable page that has no query string in it
↳ Fix 404s and redirect chains
↳ No orphan pages
↳ Every important URL should have at least one internal link pointing to it (seogets shows all such pages)
📁 Indexing
↳ Add sitemap.xml to Google Search Console
↳ See if all the pages are indexed
↳ If not, run @indexrusher
↳ Do the same for Bing and Yandex via indexrusher
↳ robots.txt should be there and allow your public pages, again, ask chatgpt to check your robots.txt
↳ Request indexing in GSC for new pages or run indexrusher to automate this
↳ Check Coverage / Pages reports
↳ Fix “crawled – currently not indexed” on pages that should rank
↳ Don’t waste crawl budget (don't create too many pages, too many folders, tags, groupss...at least right away, you better do it later once the first bulk is indexed)
📁 Analytics
↳ Google Search Console
↳ Ahrefs small plan
↳ @seogets + @DataFast_
↳ Once a week, look at:
↳ Queries with impressions but few clicks (take the queries pointing to these pages and embed them into h1 and meta title)
↳ Pages that used to get clicks and then decayed (update the content here)
📁 Low hanging fruit
↳ Pages already in positions 8–20
↳ Those are closer to page 1 than any new article
↳ Add the exact query(if makes sense) to H1 / title / H2
↳ Add one missing section the current top results have
↳ Queries with lots of impressions and almost no clicks
↳ Rewrite title + meta, keep the keyword
↳ Old pages that already get a little traffic
↳ Update them before writing a new one (google kinda loves to see pages being regularly updated)
↳ Pages Google knows but didn’t index
↳ Request indexing manually page by page, or run @indexrusher (if it doesn't help, remove them, cuz google wont index them ever)
↳ Thin pages fighting each other for the same query
↳ Keep the stronger URL
↳ Merge or 301 the weaker one
📁 Quick 5min SEO hacks
↳ Paste a URL into GSC → URL Inspection → Request indexing
↳ Put the target keyword in the first 60 characters of the title
↳ Add the main query into the H1 if it’s missing
↳ Add 2 internal links from old posts to the page I want to push
↳ Add alt text to the first image on the page
↳ Add a 3-question FAQ at the bottom using GSC queries
↳ Submit / resubmit sitemap.xml in GSC
↳ Search site:mydomain and see if the pages are indexed and how they look like
↳ Google my brand + product keyword
↳ If a page mentions me with no link, ask them to add one
↳ Ask ChatGPT “best tool for [keyword]”
↳ Open the cited URLs
↳ Email those authors the same day (offer them either money or a link exchange)
↳ Post the article URL on X / LinkedIn / Reddit with the keyword in the first line
↳ Drop the URL into Claude: “what 5 on-page fixes can I do in 5 minutes?”
📁 Blog
↳ Write 1 good blog post a week
↳ Do it manually with some AI assistance
↳ Focus on the most promising keywords where you already rank high
↳ Use @seobotai to generate more blog articles
↳ See if some of them get traction
↳ Manually turn the promising ones from AI-generated into high-quality human-made articles
↳ Before writing, search Google for the keyword
↳ Match the format that already ranks
↳ Answer the question better than the current top 5
↳ Put original stuff in the article
↳ Screenshots
↳ My own numbers
↳ What I actually tried (basically ensure google that this article comes from a human's own experience)
↳ Refresh old posts that already get impressions
↳ Update the date only if the content actually changed (avoid hacks here, do real updates)
↳ Useful page types on top of the weekly post:
↳ “best X”
↳ “X vs Y”
↳ “X alternatives”
↳ “how to” for the exact job my product does
📁 Backlinks
↳ Ask ChatGPT: “What’s the best tool for...”
↳ See the URLs it used to form the response
↳ Reach out to all those authors
↳ Ask them to include my URL in exchange for money or a backlink from you
↳ Do the same in Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini and Grok
↳ Search Google for your keywords
↳ Find the pages that already rank
↳ Do the same as above
↳ List on as many directories as possible using @listingbott
↳ Link all my pages across all my websites when possible
↳ Do internal linking on each site too
↳ Between blog articles
↳ Between pages
↳ Extra places that still work:
↳ Guest posts on sites that already rank for my keywords
↳ “best tools” roundups
↳ Unlinked brand mentions
↳ Search Google for my brand name
↳ Ask them to turn the mention into a link
↳ When I link out or guest post, I want the page to have:
↳ Real traffic
↳ A topic close to mine
↳ A link that looks natural on the page (avoid spam at all cost)
📁 Social media SEO
↳ Social media gets indexed instantly
↳ Reddit
↳ X
↳ Substack
↳ LinkedIn
↳ Monitor hot, growing keywords and trends
↳ Google Trends
↳ Radar on X
↳ Produce posts around those trends
↳ Place some of the product links inside
↳ Find relevant social media posts via Google Search
↳ Plug my product into the comments when it brings some value
↳ No spam
↳ Put the keyword in the first line of the post
↳ Turn each good blog post into (and link back to the original url with a backlinks, cuz social media backlinks in my experience have really high weight for google):
↳ 1 X thread
↳ 1 LinkedIn post
↳ 1 Reddit answer where it actually helps
↳ Reply under bigger posts in my niche
↳ Useful reply first
↳ Link only if it adds something
📁 AI search
↳ Same game as SEO
↳ Ask ChatGPT / Claude / Perplexity / Gemini:
↳ “What’s the best tool for [my keyword]?”
↳ “Best alternatives to [competitor]”
↳ See if they mention me
↳ If not, look at who they mentioned and get onto those same pages by paying them or doing a link exchange
---
That's it for now.
I'll share the next topic in my next tweet. What should it be?
Also, i put it all in great details into my Founder Guide: guide.johnrush.me/
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Something I take for granted as a US citizen.
Wilson is a brilliant and solid dude, and can't get a visa to attend a conference that anyone with half a brain would be able to see is valid.
With all the rampant fraud, it's discouraging to see things like this. :/
I'm so tired.
This was my second time applying for a Visa to attend a conference in the EU (this time @MicroConf)
Refused again.
Here are a couple things I submitted during the application process:
- a signed letter of introduction from myself
- an invitation letter from MicroConf
- an invitation letter from the organizer
- payment proof of my ticket ($1K +)
- copies of my previous visas (I was in the Schengen area last year!)
- copies of my health insurance
- a to-and-fro flight reservation doc
- a hotel reservation doc
- 100+ pages of personal bank statements in the last quarter (from 4 banks!)
- business bank statements from two banks
- @Stripe transaction history
- letters of incorporation
- letters from the IRS
- tax payment and extension documentation
- a signed letter from my ex-cofounder @helloitsolly
All in all I burned ~$600 on the entire application, including flights to and from the embassy and accommodation.
Just to attend a startup conference in another country 🫠
The rejection reason (singular)?
> There are reasonable doubts as to your intention to leave the territory of the Member States before the expiry of the visa
Not sure what else I could have done ha!
Sucks more because I would have preferred to spend the 100+ hours lost on this improving @FerndeskHQ.
Traveling as a Nigerian is just genuinely exhausting...
Anyway HUGE thanks to @MicroConf for accommodating my strange documentation requests in anticipation of this ha!
It ultimately couldn't be helped :(
Matthew Mellinger retweeted
In an endless sea of crappy vibe-coded SEO tools there is @seogets
Such a great tool that saves SEOs real time in their day-to-day that is also agent-foward in its development.
A good example of a SaaS built by someone with good 'taste'. Keep it up!!!!
Matthew Mellinger retweeted
Everybody's making more stuff. More content. More research. More landing pages. More apps. More tools. More software. More domains. More videos. More graphics. More reports. More. More. More.
Very few people are making amazing stuff
🚨On the shuttle home headed east on I-40 from Nashville airport. BOOM goes the car engine! 🔥
@NC5 @FOXNashville @WKRN @Tennessean
Matthew Mellinger retweeted
Amazing to see that one of my favorite SEO tools, @seogets, now has a free tier again… yes, you can use it for free.
SEO Gets has quickly become my day-to-day tool for easily analyzing GSC/GA4 trends with 🔥 features like:
* Content group / topic cluster performance
* Identifying growing or decaying topics, queries, and pages in a click
* Combined indexing reporting along with clicks / impressions data
* … and more!
I had the awesome chance to meet the awesome @MattMelli last month in Boston at the #SEOFOMO meetup, where he invited me to become one of the new ambassadors for the tool: providing feedback and helping promote its 🔥 features.
And I instantly said yes… because it’s so good. And now also available for free.
Check it out: seogets(.)com 🙌
Matthew Mellinger retweeted
I’ve spent the last 18 months doing AI SEO / GEO / AEO for B2B SaaS companies... and here's the 10 biggest things I've learned:
1. Most companies do not have an "AEO problem." Most do not have an unfixable technical SEO problem either. They have a positioning, category alignment, and market validation problem.
2. I've spent too many hours in meetings explaining how the old-world SEO model is dying (clicks and rankings) and the new model is about being selected for AI-powered answer recommendations.
3. Brand selection depends on whether the market, your website, your customers, and third-party sources all tell the same story about why your brand belongs in the answer. This is not about llms.txt or paragraph chunking.
4. Bulldozing your way to the top with listicles and backlinks may help you rank, but not get recommended. Especially if your brand doesn't belong in that category.
5. The best AEO strategy starts with positioning and category alignment.
Here is the proper diagnostic framework for: “What's our AEO strategy?”
Do we have clear product positioning?
Do we have messaging that's aligned to the category?
Does the website make our category alignment obvious?
Do we have a BOFU content strategy aligned with the desired category?
Do we have an external authority gap?
6. AI referral traffic is negligible for most B2B SaaS companies.
For most of the companies I work with: ChatGPT / Perplexity / Gemini / Claude, etc. is a tiny fraction compared to Google.
It's common to see a range of 5% (AI) vs 95% (Google).
Why? Because AI SEO eliminates top of funnel, whereas traditional SEO sends mostly informational traffic.
7. Visitor to page conversion rates from AI referral traffic tend to be higher than traditional Google traffic.
This is because of personalization, long-tail BOFU intent, and the elimination of TOFU intent.
8. There's a "Dark SEO" funnel emerging where buyers are shortlisting vendor options with AI search, verifying the brands they want to evaluate with Google search, and then converting directly on the website from branded search much later in the buying process.
9. Off-site authority matters, but the GEO vendor claims are getting out of control. I'm skeptical on things like: “90% of AI visibility comes from third-party sources.” etc.
Claims like these are confusing and pulled out of context. This causes marketers to have the wrong reactions and think irrationally.
10. Buying AEO tools is not a strategy. I have personally worked with companies that purchased AEO tools with no strategy in-place. The mere fact that a tool was purchased only buys them time with the board... "we're working on it" ... but it's not a real strategy.
Bonus: There's a "research" study out there which fits any narrative you want to push. Be wary. And be skeptical.
I appreciate Ian's willingness to share. But this line of thinking is very damaging imo.
The piece that is vital is the 97% bounce rate and 14 sec duration. It's all TOF and will not move the needle at all.
So why do it? Clicks don't matter without intent.
I'll start with the proof of quality because I'm sure you're skeptical of my "high quality" claim.
"Quality" is highly subjective, so the only objective way to prove it is by looking at data. In the case of an article, rankings + traffic is the best data available for proof of quality.
(I'm not arguing that poor rankings = low-quality article, I'm simply arguing that high rankings = high-quality article in the eyes of a search engine. There are caveats of course, but in general this is the best way to prove quality.)
My articles are high quality because I've already published hundreds using the exact same system, and my rankings + traffic are consistently improving.
This traffic is also spread across my articles quite evenly, with the top article accounting for less than 4% of traffic.
(regarding the high bounce rate and low views per visit and visit duration, my articles give the answer right away so there's no need for users to stick around).
