r/SEO_Xpert

I've been experimenting with prompts for SEO and AI-first content over the past few months, and this one has consistently produced the best results for me.

Instead of simply asking an AI to "write an SEO article," I changed the way I prompt it. Rather than focusing on keywords first, I make the model think through the topic before it starts writing. The difference has been bigger than I expected.

The articles feel like they convey a deep understanding of the subject, rather than being written by someone who actually understands the subject instead of someone summarizing the top search results. They require less editing, have stronger topical depth, and answer questions in a way that's useful for both readers and AI search.

I've also noticed they naturally include implementation details, trade-offs, and practical insights instead of generic advice. That seems to make them much easier for AI search systems to summarize while still being genuinely helpful to readers.

I'm not saying this prompt alone gets rankings. Topical authority, EEAT, internal linking, and technical SEO still matter. But changing how I prompt the model has had a bigger impact on my content quality than switching between AI models.

Here's the prompt in case anyone wants to experiment with it.

Strictly avoid:
- Em dashes
- Excessive colons
- Unnecessary parentheses
- Generic AI-generated phrasing
- Surface-level explanations
- Marketing-heavy buzzwords
- Filler content
- Repetitive sentence patterns
- Overexplaining basic concepts
- Robotic transitions

Before writing:
- Analyze the topic from both engineering and business perspectives.
- Focus on implementation realities and technical decision-making.
- Include practical engineering insights where relevant.
- Assume the audience is technically experienced.
- Ensure the content feels credible to CTOs, engineers, and technical leaders.

During writing:
- Lead with the answer, then expand with supporting context.
- Explain trade-offs instead of presenting a single "best" solution.
- Use concrete examples, workflows, and implementation details.
- Include semantic entities and related concepts naturally instead of forcing keywords.
- Optimize for topical completeness rather than keyword density.
- Write in a way that AI search engines can easily extract concise answers while

keeping the article valuable for human readers.
- Support claims with evidence or reasoning whenever possible.
- Prefer short, clear paragraphs over long blocks of text.
- Avoid repeating the same idea in different words.
- Write with the depth expected from someone who has actually worked on the problem.

After writing:
- Review the article and remove anything that sounds generic or AI-generated.
- Check whether every section adds unique value.
- Make sure the content demonstrates expertise rather than simply explaining definitions.

I'm still refining it, but it's been one of the biggest improvements to my content workflow this last month.

Has anyone else found that prompt engineering has a bigger impact on content quality than the AI model itself? I'd be interested in seeing what other people are using.

So i’ve been trying different strategies and tools for SEO, AEO & GEO for a couple of my clients, both Traditional & Agentic

And i noticed that no matter how many strategies or tools i’ve used, one always corrects the other, there’s always something missing or something that is underrated/overrated since it’s mostly been about predictions rather than confirmed signs especially when it comes to SEO & GEO

And funny thing is, every approved strategy by one LLM, is challenged by another

There’s always a conflict
Always a correction/improvement
Always something missing

So I decided to gather all my skills and knowledge about SEO and drop everything i have about SEO, AEO & GEO back and forth between ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini for one playbook that scores 10/10 on all of them, one they all agree on for once

I’m close to finishing it just doing some further research then i’m gonna be dropping it on here, hopefully for the most accurate guide that can be used both traditionally and agentic, it’s currently scored above 9/10 on all of them

Just wondering if anyone tried that so i’d have heads up until then, anymore LLMs i should consider (i might get Perplexity in the loop as well)

As someone who spend hundreds of hours experimenting and observing SEO, i know that there isn’t the perfect SEO, but i mean to get all LLMs to agree on something? It’s got to be the closest to perfect

with everything going on, we all are still doing content, still writing, researching and publishing, and thats fine, we’re doing it as well..

but one thing is the most to note that the way of people used to search, and make purchase decisions has completely changed.. in just 2-3 years

so if our content is not adapted to it, we are already behind, and the reason of our content not working is not the ai, its the shift in customer behavior.

here’s my 2 cents on how we do it that i believe are still giving us roi on our content

1. Writing for topics instead of problems

There's a difference between "what is programmatic seo" and "how do i scale landing pages without a developer." one is a definition. the other is a real problem someone is desperately trying to solve. google and llms both reward the second type. write for the problem, not the topic.

2. Ignoring the bottom of the funnel completely, everyone

Wants tofu traffic. big numbers, easy to report. but bofu pages - feature pages, solution pages, use case pages - these are where actual signups happen. most sites have maybe 3-5 of them. that's not a content strategy, that's a homepage with extra steps.

i work with an seo agency auq, and we primarily work with saas companies. most brands when they come to us they’d already have the feature, solution pages.. but one of the most consistent wins we get early on is to expand on their feature/solution pages, going mroe deep and adding more bofu pages that has search demand and solves an actual problem.

one of my fav strategy, works every time

3. Treating every piece the same

A comparison page needs a completely different tone and structure than an educational blog. a landing page needs different signals than a listicle. when everything looks the same, nothing stands out to the algorithm or the reader.

4. No distribution plan

Writing a piece and hitting publish is not a strategy. if you're not actively distributing through linkedin, newsletters, reddit, youtube - you're basically throwing content into a void and wondering why nobody shows up.

5. Skipping original data

Anyone can write "5 seo tips for saas." not everyone can write "we analyzed 200 saas homepages and here's what the top 10% did differently." one gets ignored. the other gets shared, linked to, and cited by llms.

the fundamentals haven't changed. the execution bar has just gone way higher.

what's the biggest content mistake you see brands making right now? genuinely curious.

Actually, I made a mistake on our website. I accidentally removed the blog section that had been optimized for SEO. I removed it yesterday, and the changes went live today. As soon as I realized the mistake, I restored the blog section.

I wanted to ask whether this could affect our keyword rankings. Since the content has been restored, do you think the rankings will recover, or is there still a chance of a significant impact?

Let me know guys maybe I can loose my job 🥲

Actually, I made a mistake on our website. I accidentally removed the blog section that had been optimized for SEO. I removed it yesterday, and the changes went live today. As soon as I realized the mistake, I restored the blog section.

I wanted to ask whether this could affect our keyword rankings. Since the content has been restored, do you think the rankings will recover, or is there still a chance of a significant impact?

Let me know guys maybe I can loose my job 🥲

You only get one

Asking all the experts here, I'll keep it short,

Around 5 months ago i've started working for a big Ecommerce site, How big? they have 1500 Active Categories and Sub-categories. also, around 300K Products on the site. I work as a On-page SEO Specialist and my main job is Category Page Optimization but i also do Technical SEO and Backlinks, because i'm the Only guy in this company who does SEO. Marketing and Content have their own tasks.

It's been 5 months and i do have a Strategy on how to optimize the website but what makes me anxious is how freakin slow everything is going. let me first explain what im doing:

Category Descriptions:

• Do Keyword research for each Product category and find best commercial/transactional keywords.
• Analyze my competitors, what keywords they rank on and check their category descriptions.
• Write Category Descriptions with search intent on our product catalogue, the brands we offer, features, why they must buy from us and with a FAQ at the end.
• add anchor links in the text linking to related categories and accessories (No dead-end pages).
• Usual H1-H5 Hierarchy with most important keywords.
• Make sure its all original with duplicate checkers.
• Make sure theres max amount of anchor links to link categories and product pages with eachother.
• Make sure the category text is at least as long as the competitots text (i know, being informative is more important).
• Optimize Product category names (Clear and straight forward keywords).

Blog Articles:

Usually, Do keyword research and write "How To" "Guide" and "Top" blog articles about products, add links to our categories. High quality Original Pics keywords on their name and alt tags.

Now, things that are not addressed because the Web Devs are "Too Busy".

Technical SEO:

Usual, Lighthouse optimization, Schema markups, addressing slow pages and stuff like that.

One big issue the website has is that with pagination, the category texts keep repeating, so the same category text appears on page 1 and 20.

Find Duplicate category pages and redirect canonical tags to the "dominant" page.

NOTE: If there are two pages with same name but in different category trees, than it doesnt count as Duplicate.

Backlinks:

Of course, no onpage SEO is enough to defeat a competitor with 10 Quality backllinks targeting straight to their page, so we need backlinks but so far the budget hasnt been thought of.

So, Whats the problem?

So far, i've managed to optimize 80 Categories and most of them like 60% have improved, some big categories like Bathtubs and Construction instruments managed to rank #1 on main keywords and most articles i've wrote are on top 3.

What makes me anxious is how freakin slow everything is going, How many things should be addressed, also idk which to focus on, internal linking? text? blogs? theres so many on this gigantic website, idk how to split my working days. I keep telling my boss how important Technical SEO and backlinks are but he's also very busy and keeps promising that it will all be done.

What im asking?

I do have SEO experience but i worked for smaller ecommerce sites, this site is huge and im worried if im doing something wrong, maybe i need to rely more on AI prompts to speed up my work? maybe i 100% need to focus on internal linking first? maybe Tech SEO doesnt really matter that much now.

Over the last 6 months I've been running experiments across different topics while building content for my SaaS.

One thing became very clear:

Most of the common AEO advice isn't what determines whether a page gets surfaced.

Here's what consistently mattered.

1. Indexing is the first gate

It sounds obvious, but if Google or Bing hasn't indexed the page, don't expect ChatGPT or other search-based AI systems to surface it.

Before thinking about AI optimization, make sure your pages are actually getting indexed.

2. Search intent is more important than formatting

One thing I started checking for every page was the queries Google associated with it in Search Console.

For example:

• I write a comparison page.
• Google mostly ranks it for "how to" queries.

That's usually a sign the page isn't matching the intended intent.

Instead of rewriting everything, I either waited for Google to understand the page better or adjusted the content until the ranking queries aligned with the page's purpose.

This consistently produced better results than tweaking headings or adding more schema.

3. Competition still beats optimization

One of my biggest wins came from targeting a topic with very little competition.

The page started appearing in Google AI and ChatGPT within about a week.

On the other hand, I've published content around highly competitive topics using the exact same process and those pages still struggle.

The difference wasn't "better AEO."

It was competition.

So what actually worked?

• Making sure pages get indexed.
• Matching content to the search intent Google recognizes.
• Finding topics with genuine content gaps.
• Building topical clusters instead of isolated articles.
• Publishing genuinely useful content.

What didn't consistently make a difference

I tested most of the common advice floating around:

• Putting the answer in the first paragraph.
• FAQ Schema.
• Lots of tables.
• Tiny content chunks.
• Every heading written as a question.

None of these consistently improved rankings by themselves.

They may improve readability, but they don't replace good topical coverage and clear intent.

Curious if others have observed something similar, or if you've found factors that consistently move the needle beyond the basics.

SEO has always been the part I keep putting off for my app. Tried the usual stuff: guest posts, directories, asking other founders to swap links. It moves slow.

A few weeks ago, I purchased Marketing 1on1 backlinks packages. Figured I'd just test it with a small package and see what happened. Honestly the results were more noticeable than I expected for organic traffic, though it's still early to say how much of it sticks long term.

I'm not fully sold that it's a sustainable strategy on its own, but it helped push a few pages up enough that I stopped obsessing over it daily.

Curious if anyone else here has gone that route for early stage growth. Did it hold up over time or did you end up having to redo it every few months?

I have a page that compares my product with several of the competition. The page was written to rank for the [Best of X] keyword and query. However, Google ranks it for the [X Alternative], for when someone is looking for an alternative to one of my competitors.

I figured since it's ranking way better for the alternative query, I can update it to match that query better (title, metas, content, changing it into a guide for migrating from other tools) and create a new post that deals with the Best... query with a comprehensive researched review.

Will updating the original page like that hurt its ranking? Since it's already on page 1 serp I don't want to mess with it, but because it's title is Best ... it gets little clicks. TIA

I have a blog with over 200 articles, and it's a 6-year blog. The problem I have right now is that only 60 articles are indexed. The rest fall into different categories like crawled not indexed, discovered not indexed, and blocked by TXT.

In the past, I used to deal with it by editing the articles and requesting indexing manually, but I think it has not worked well. How do you deal with your indexing issues, because it feels like adding more articles when most of them remain indexed doesn't help much.

Hi,

I'm launching my website to promote my productivity application. I learned that SEO was very important to maximize visits on my website. So my strategy is, in addition to optimize the interface, to publish regularly articles about news, app content and general topics (tips, educative articles...) to have better search results.

I'm thinking about the structure of my articles and I'm wondering if a Q/A section at the end of the article that would help to quickly synthetize the informations would help for SEO.

Any advices and experiences ?

Hi,

I'm launching my website to promote my productivity application. I learned that SEO was very important to maximize visits on my website. So my strategy is, in addition to optimize the interface, to publish regularly articles about news, app content and general topics (tips, educative articles...) to have better search results.

I'm thinking about the structure of my articles and I'm wondering if a Q/A section at the end of the article that would help to quickly synthetize the informations would help for SEO.

Any advices and experiences ?

For me, niche-relevant guest posts and resource page links still deliver solid results. They pass real authority, bring in referral traffic, and feel safe even with Google’s updates. On the other hand, I’ve completely stopped wasting time on mass blog comments, low-quality directories, and random profile links — they add almost no value and can do more harm than good over time.

I’m curious to hear your take. What’s your go-to method these days, and which strategy have you crossed off your list for good?

Most local business owners know reviews matter. They just do not have a real process.

They ask when they remember, forget for months, then panic when a competitor has more recent reviews.

The simple version usually works best:

1. Ask right after a successful job. Not weeks later, when the customer barely remembers the details.
2. Explain why it matters. "It helps other local customers trust us" feels more natural than just asking for stars.
3. Send a direct review link. Make it easy. Most happy customers will not search for the profile themselves.
4. Do not pressure or incentivize. No discounts, no gifts, no "please mention this keyword." Just ask for honest feedback.
5. Reply to every review. Good or bad. It shows the business is active and paying attention.
6. Track freshness monthly. Total review count matters. But recent reviews usually feel more trustworthy to customers.

For local service businesses, a steady review habit works better than one big push every few months.

One thing freelancing has taught me:

Almost every business owner asks, How long will SEO take?

Very few ask, What should we fix first?

The truth is, I can't answer the first question without answering the second.

Before discussing timelines or pricing, I always want to understand:

• What technical issues exist?
• Is the site structure right?
• Which pages have the biggest opportunity?
• Who are the real competitors?

A quick audit usually tells me far more than a long sales call.

Every website is different, and so is every SEO strategy.

How do you approach new SEO projects?