The Edward Show

E1191: One SEO spent the summer going through more than 30,000 documents and narrowing them down to 9,249 SEO case studies, tests, and papers with measurable results.
The final dataset covered 552 cited sources and 182 SEO tactics.
I go through some of the weirdest findings, the tests I agree with, the ones I question, and the tactics worth experimenting with on your own sites.
Some of the findings:
- Writing title tags entirely in capital letters increased organic traffic 17.5% across two independent tests
- Removing synonym keywords from title tags reduced organic traffic 27%
- Removing the word "compare" from title tags increased organic traffic 24%
- Putting product prices in title tags reduced organic traffic 15%
- Number emojis in meta descriptions reduced organic traffic 5%
- Using a 410 instead of a 404 got removed pages dropped from Google's index much faster
- Editorial backlinks earned through digital PR increased organic sessions 71%
- Disavowing links without a manual penalty showed no measurable direction
- Adding internal links to orphaned blog posts produced major ranking improvements
- Homepage footer links to category and subcategory pages increased organic sessions 5-10% in one controlled test
- Adding prominent brand CTA blocks to product pages increased conversions 80% across two tests
I also dig into the AEO and GEO findings.
The evidence there is much thinner, but some of the reported results are worth testing:
- Adding quantitative statistics increased AI citations 37%
- Adding quotes from credible named sources increased citations 22-41%
- Keyword stuffing reduced AI citations 10%
- Putting a direct answer in the opening paragraph increased citations 280%
- Writing content as discrete factual statements produced a 5X increase
- Moving source references directly next to claims increased citations 40%
- Adding author bylines increased AI citations 113%
- Human editing of AI-written content increased citations 67%
- Targeted AI-written additions to specific pages increased citations 73%
- Publishing AI-generated text across an entire site reduced organic sessions 35%
I also cover one of the most interesting findings around LLMs.txt.
Across the underlying measurements, results ranged from -19.7% to +81%. More importantly, there wasn't a single controlled LLMs.txt test in all 9,249 documents.
Anyone claiming LLMs.txt definitively improves SEO or AI visibility is working with extremely weak evidence.
We also get into Google Business Profile categories, keywords in URLs, emojis in title tags, internal linking, disavow files, title tag testing, mass AI content, and why so many GEO studies are difficult to trust.
The biggest takeaway: traditional SEO testing still produces some of the strongest measurable results, especially around title tags, internal links, backlinks, and page structure.
⭐️ Reddit: I Read 9,249 SEO Case Studies to Build the Biggest SEO Meta-Study - https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/1wmb181/i_read_9249_seo_case_studies_to_build_the_biggest/ 
⭐️ Ovisy: The Biggest SEO Meta-Study (Full Study) - https://ovisy.hr/blog/seo-meta-study 
⭐️ Ep 763 - The SEO Trick That Breaks All the Rules: How Ultra-Long Page Titles Boost Rankings - https://youtu.be/ufjwb51hJuc 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Meta Study Setup
00:52 How The Data Was Built
01:38 Title Tag Oddities
03:15 Breadcrumbs And Status Codes
04:01 Backlinks And Disavow
05:27 Internal Linking Wins
07:31 AEO And GEO Evidence
10:27 LLMs.txt And AI Content
11:50 Local SEO And URL Keywords
13:02 Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization

E1190: Google is making it harder to scrape its search results, and SEO tools are getting caught in the middle.
Barry Schwartz, founder of Search Engine Roundtable and one of the longest-running reporters in the search industry, joins me to break down what Google is doing, why rank-tracking data has become less reliable, and what happens next.
Barry has covered Google and search every day since 2003. In this episode, we go deep on Google's fight against AI scrapers, the September 2026 spam update, scaled AI content, Google losing trust in entire websites, and the future of SEO.
We cover:
- Google's new GoTo redirects and what they mean for SEO tools
- Why Barry says the GoTo redirect itself is not the biggest problem
- Google's broader crackdown on companies scraping its search results
- The widespread IP blocking targeting proxies used by scraping companies
- The increase in CAPTCHAs making automated Google searches harder
- Reports that Google is injecting bad or fake data into search results shown to bots
- Why unreliable SERP data creates a much bigger problem for rank trackers
- Why Google appears more focused on ChatGPT and SERP APIs than Ahrefs or Semrush
- Why Barry doubts rank trackers will return to their previous level of reliability
- Why Google Search Console has become more important as third-party data gets harder to trust
- Why selling rankings becomes harder when Google controls the underlying data
- What makes the September 2026 spam update different from recent spam updates
- Why its long rollout suggests Google is pushing several spam systems or components
- The multiple phases Barry has seen throughout the September spam update
- How Google could detect sudden explosions of AI-generated pages without behavioral data
- Why publishing 50,000 pages in a week creates an obvious pattern for Google
- How templated programmatic content fits into Google's fight against scaled AI content
- Google's complicated internal relationship with AI-generated writing
- Google's new guidance telling publishers to manually review AI-generated content
- Why scale matters more than whether one individual page used AI
- Why spam updates and core updates require different recovery strategies
- What website owners should review after getting hit by a spam update
- Why Barry warns against blindly disavowing links after an update
- The difference between fixing a spam violation and rebuilding a site after a core update
- What John Mueller meant when he said Google's systems can "lose faith in a website"
- How enough weak pages create sitewide trust and indexing problems
- Why recovering from lost trust may require rewriting, removing, and pruning content
- Why some Google spam systems already run continuously
- Why Google keeps introducing structured data and later removing support for certain types
- What actually keeps Google up at night: the enormous amount of AI content flooding the web
- Why Google's problem has flipped from not having enough content to having far too much
- Barry's perspective after nearly 50,000 published Search Engine Roundtable articles
- Why consistency, expertise, and actually caring about the industry still matter after decades in search
⭐️ Search Engine Roundtable - https://www.seroundtable.com/ 
⭐️ Barry Schwartz on 𝕏 - https://x.com/rustybrick 
⭐️ Barry Schwartz on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rustybrick/ 
⭐️ Barry Schwartz's agency, RustyBrick - https://www.rustybrick.com/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Barry Schwartz Intro
01:09 GoTo Redirect Chaos
03:33 Google Blocking Tactics
07:07 Rank Tracking Future
09:06 SEO Reporting Reality
12:15 September Spam Update
15:01 Mount AI Signals
17:00 Google AI Writing Stance
20:22 Mueller Likes AI Critique
22:23 Spam Updates Hitting Harder
26:38 SEO Interest Surging
31:08 Which Sites Get Hit
32:05 Spam Update Targets
33:11 Spam Winners Losers
35:03 Old School SEO
37:15 Recovering From Hits
39:56 AI Scale Signals
41:31 Collateral Damage Stories
45:11 Google Bugs Iteration
46:14 Google And SEOs
48:44 Losing Trust Recovery
50:17 Continuous Enforcement
51:25 Schema Rise Fall
54:46 What Surprises Barry
56:04 Passion Community Work
01:00:29 Final Thanks Outro
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #searchmarketing #digitalmarketing

E1188: Your page might target a keyword properly and still lose rankings because you chose the wrong type of page for the search.
I turn search intent into a quiz: for each keyword, predict whether searchers want a blog post, landing page, or category page - before I reveal the answer.
I recently consulted a site with thousands of pages that had steadily lost SEO traffic for years. They blamed negative SEO and bad backlinks. But new pages still ranked within two weeks, then lost their positions.
The bigger problem was mismatched search intent: the site frequently used the wrong page type and the wrong copy for what searchers wanted.
In this episode:
- The exercise I recommend when your SEO traffic starts declining
- Why I start with a site's most-clicked pages
- How to decide between a blog post, landing page, and category page
- Why "top tenant screening tools" needs a blog post
- Why "tenant screening software" needs a landing page
- Why "tenant screening software features" needs a blog post
- Why "shingle repair Dallas" needs a service landing page
- Why "PR agencies for service businesses" needs a blog post
- Why "roof repair cost Dallas" needs informational content
- Why "handwoven storage baskets" needs an ecommerce category page
- Why "how to choose an ergonomic office chair" needs a blog post
- How I approach "best office chairs for back pain" with a blog/category hybrid
- The important difference between "Salesforce alternative" and "Salesforce alternatives"
- Why a singular landing page outranks plural listicles
- How satisfied clicks influence which result deserves to stay near the top
- Why searchers sometimes prefer a direct first-party landing page over another comparison article
- My page title formula: Target Keyword | Benefit or Searcher's Goal | Brand Name
- How I place the target keyword in the page title, URL, H1, and opening sentence
- How "Looking for tenant screening software? We've got you covered" wastes valuable above-the-fold copy
- How to write an opening sentence that immediately tells searchers what the product does
- Why mismatched search intent hurts rankings more today than it did several years ago
- What pogo-sticking tells a search engine about the experience on your page
- The search-intent audit I recommend running even when your traffic looks healthy
The core exercise is simple:
Start with your most-clicked pages.
Ask what primary keyword each page targets.
Then ask whether someone searching that keyword actually wants the type of content you gave them.
A relevant page is not enough. The page also needs to satisfy what the searcher came to Google looking for.
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Fix Declining SEO Traffic
00:39 Case Study Intent Problem
02:16 SaaS Page Type Quiz
03:51 Services Keyword Examples
04:46 Ecommerce Category vs Blog
05:59 Singular vs Plural Nuance
08:09 Page Titles and Copywriting
09:13 Why Intent Mismatch Hurts
10:52 Exercise Recap
12:05 Final Thanks and Outro
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #performancemarketing

E1189: Exact match domains still rank in local SEO, and David Quaid explains where they still give businesses an advantage.
David breaks down how to use exact match domains for local businesses, how they interact with Google Business Profiles, why branded domains and EMDs serve different purposes, and where people go wrong when they expect the domain alone to do all the work.
David also explains why EMDs work especially well in competitive cities, how he thinks about topical authority, and why a local business should build around one valuable root keyword instead of trying to rank for everything.
We cover:
- Why exact match domains still matter in local SEO
- How to choose an EMD around your highest-value keyword
- Why city modifiers matter for local businesses
- How EMDs affect Google Business Profile relevance
- Why David prefers combining a brand with the target keyword
- When to use a new domain versus your existing branded domain
- Why EMDs still need links, authority, and trust
- Why adding "best" to a domain does not automatically improve rankings
- Why "near me" domains no longer carry the same weight
- How Google treats branded searches differently from generic searches
- Why EMDs work differently now than they did years ago
- How strong brands make competitor EMDs harder to rank
- Why EMDs often show up in competitive local map results
- How David thinks EMDs affect topical authority
- Why one focused EMD beats spreading relevance across unrelated services
- How child pages inherit relevance from the domain topic
- What an EMD homepage should look like
- Why the site still needs to look like a real business
- Why service pages should match Google Business Profile services
- How to connect service pages to your Google Business Profile
- Why Google Business Profile verification remains one of the hardest parts
- Why real offices, signage, and business information matter
- How multiple locations affect local visibility
- Why local businesses often rank across dozens of commercial search terms
- How EMDs may affect Google Ads quality score and paid search costs
- Why David recommends announcing new branded domains through press releases
- Why subfolders usually beat subdomains for sharing authority
- When separate domains make sense for divisions, services, or locations
David also walks through a hypothetical web design company in New York and shows how he would structure its domain, Google Business Profile, homepage, service pages, links, and local presence from the ground up.
⭐️ David Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid 
⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/ 
⭐️ David Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid 
⭐️ David Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Rapid Listener Episode
01:04 Business Names and DBAs
02:20 EMD Domain Strategy
03:57 Google Profile Verification
05:12 Keyword Research Setup
06:51 Multiple Profiles and Categories
11:48 Profile Optimization Basics
14:56 EMD Links and Ads Savings
17:10 API Leak and EMD Reality
20:00 Bad Domain Examples
24:24 Topical Authority Boost
28:38 Building the EMD Site
31:15 Subfolders Not Subdomains
31:50 Wrap Up and Outro
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#localseo #googlebusinessprofileoptimization #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1187: Google changed its guidance on AI-generated content on October 1, and the new language makes one thing very clear: publishing unchecked AI content creates real SEO risk.
Google now explicitly says publishers must manually fact-check and review AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing. That review doesn't stop with the body copy. Google says it also applies to page titles, meta descriptions, structured data, and image alt text.
I break down exactly what Google changed, what it means for SEOs using AI at scale, and how I use AI without handing an entire page over to an LLM.
We cover:
- Google's new October 1 guidance on AI-generated content
- Why Google now explicitly calls for manual fact-checking
- Why hallucinations give Google another reason to distrust scaled AI pages
- Why scaled AI content becomes especially risky when nobody reviews it
- Google's stance on AI content vs. AI spam
- Why Google does not ban AI-generated content
- How Google evaluates low-quality automated content
- Why useful, original AI-assisted content still ranks
- What Google says about AI disclosures and author bylines
- Why I recommend using AI as a writing assistant instead of one-shotting entire SEO pages
- How one-shot AI pages frequently miss search intent
- How unchecked AI content often creates weak above-the-fold experiences
- How bad user signals build when pages fail to satisfy searchers
- How Google can lose faith in an entire website after enough weak pages
- Why images and video matter when you use AI-generated text
- How AI produces bloated pages that hurt conversions
- How cutting copy, navigation, and distractions increases conversions
- Why AI-detected content may also get excluded from AI training data
The biggest takeaway: AI content itself is not the problem.
Google explicitly says automation and AI generation are not automatically spam. The problem starts when publishers use AI to generate large amounts of content without adding value, reviewing the output, correcting inaccuracies, or making sure the page satisfies search intent.
My approach remains the same: use AI as a writing assistant. Guide it closely. Edit aggressively. Fact-check everything. Add original thought, images, video, examples, and real experience. Do not give an LLM a keyword and blindly publish whatever comes back.
I also explain why simply proofreading a fully AI-written page still falls short. Once the AI decides the structure, arguments, and interpretation of search intent, you are already anchored to its thinking.
⭐️ Google Search's guidance on using generative AI content on your website - https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/using-gen-ai-content 
⭐️ Google's FAQ - https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content 
⭐️ How to Humanize AI Content - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/humanize-chatgpt-content/ 
⭐️ How to Double Your Conversions by Doing Less (10 Before-and-After Examples) - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/conversion-rate-optimisation-strategy-simplify-landing-pages/ 
⭐️ Ep 1083 - Google's New AI Spam Detector Could Wipe Out Entire SEO Networks - https://youtu.be/I78IQS99EwU 
⭐️ Ep 1153 - Google Can Detect Your AI Content. Here's What Happens Next. - https://youtu.be/G0qcfknUCcU 
⭐️ Ep 1166 - Google Can Lose Faith In Your Website (Here's How To Get It Back) - https://youtu.be/Q4cB34UticI 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 AI Content Warning
00:24 Google AI Guidance Overview
01:14 Quality Raters And AI
02:03 October 1 Fact Check Update
02:51 Scaled AI Content Risks
03:29 Give Users Context
04:21 FAQ What Counts As Spam
05:44 Detection And EEAT Basics
06:50 Authorship And Disclosures
07:42 Practical AI SEO Workflow
09:38 Humanize With Media
10:26 Trim Fluff Boost Conversions
11:20 AI Detection Consequences
13:00 Episode Outro 
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #webdevelopment