r/SEO_Xpert

I've landed a potential client — a private university in India — and need honest advice on pricing. Here's the full picture of what I'm dealing with and what my partner and I plan to deliver.

The current state of their website:

• Domain is ~18 years old (great DA potential, completely untapped)
• 90% of pages not indexed by Google
• 98% of traffic is branded (people searching the university name directly)
• Zero non-branded organic traffic
• No money pages indexed (courses, admissions, departments)
• URLs are a mess — no logical structure
• Most important content buried in PDFs, completely unindexable
• No schema markup whatsoever
• No proper XML sitemap or robots.txt
• No content strategy, no internal linking, no on-page SEO
• Outdated design, not mobile-optimised

What we're planning to deliver:

• Full technical SEO audit and fixes
• Complete website redesign (modern, mobile-first)
• New URL structure + 301 redirects + XML sitemap
• Convert key PDFs into properly indexed web pages
• Write 40–60 pages of SEO + AEO + GEO optimised content
• Content cluster architecture (pillar pages + hub-and-spoke model for topical authority)
• Schema markup (University, Course, FAQ, Breadcrumb, LocalBusiness, Article)
• AEO: FAQ schema, featured snippet targeting, People Also Ask optimisation
• GEO: entity-based content structured for visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini AI Overviews
• CMS templates so their staff can independently keep adding SEO-ready content
• Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools setup and indexing push

Our situation:

We're a two-person team based in India. Both of us are relatively new to freelancing (under 2 years each), but we're handling the entire project ourselves — strategy, design, content writing, and technical SEO. No subcontracting. Our estimated timeline is 6 months to 1 year for full delivery.

Our questions for experienced folks:

1. What would you charge for this scope in the Indian market — both at a beginner/small team rate and what an experienced agency would quote?
2. Is our scope missing anything critical for a project of this scale?
3. How would you structure payments across a 6–12 month timeline? Milestones? Retainer? Mix of both?
4. Would you pitch AEO and GEO as separate line items or bundle them under the SEO umbrella?
5. Any red flags to watch out for with university clients specifically — approvals, IT departments, scope creep?

Any input from people who've done education sector SEO or large-scale website rebuilds would be genuinely appreciated. Thanks in advance.

"We have been given free hands to do anything with the website"

>If someone DMs you a guest post pitch, an exchange, or a collaboration and you've got maybe two minutes before you reply, what do you actually check first?

Everyone got a different ranking. Some people lead with DR/DA. Others won't even open the link if the niche isn't a match. I've heard people swear by traffic overlap as the only filter that matters, and others who basically ignore traffic entirely and look at outbound link patterns first.

For me it's outbound links and page-level relevance, with DR/DA somewhere near the end. But I've changed my mind on this twice in the last year and might be wrong again.

What's at the top of your list, and is there one signal you used to trust that you've now learned to ignore?

Hi, I need sites in the following niches:

1. Money-Saving

2. Personal Finance

3. E-commerce/retail/shopping

4. SaaS/tool based or similar tech site

Regions:

USA

Australia

Germany

France

Please reach out or comment below.

With more people using LLMs instead of Google for research, I'm trying to figure out how often our brand actually shows up when someone asks Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity questions in our category — and how we stack up against competitors.

I've come across a few tools (Profound, Otterly, AthenaHQ, Peec AI, Scrunch) but haven't tested them properly yet. Curious if anyone here is actively tracking this:

- Which tool are you using and what made you pick it?

- How reliable is the data — do the citations actually match what you see when you run the prompts yourself?

- Worth paying for, or can you reasonably DIY this with a Sheet and some API calls?

B2B SaaS context if that matters. Appreciate any honest takes — the space feels noisy and half the tools look the same on the landing page.

Feels like marketers spend a lot of time optimizing things clients barely notice.

Meanwhile, most clients mainly care about:

• leads
• sales
• clarity
• communication

What is something marketers obsess over that clients usually don’t care much about?

Is it’s mandatory

Example:

User-agent: GPTBot

Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot

Allow: /

User-agent: Googlebot

Allow: /

User-agent: *

Disallow:

This is maybe a dumb question but I'm totally new to SEO. Where should I learn about SEO? And what should I learn first?

What actually worked for you in SEO when starting from 0?

Fully organic. No paid ads, no audience.

Was it mostly blogs?
Or something else entirely?

Curious what got people their first real traffic/customers:

• content?
• backlinks?
• niche sites?
• Reddit?
• free tools?
• programmatic SEO?

What would you do again? and what was a waste of time?

this happened 6 weeks ago and i keep coming back to it because i can't construct a satisfying explanation.

client has a page that had been ranking position 2 for a competitive commercial keyword for about 14 months. stable. no significant movement up or down. good traffic, good conversion rate from that page.

then one morning: gone. not page 2, not position 15. just gone from the top 100 for that keyword entirely. search console still showed it was indexed. url inspection showed it was crawlable and recently crawled. no manual action. no penalty notice. nothing in search console to explain it.

we checked everything in the first 48 hours. no recent content changes. no technical issues introduced. no sudden spike in toxic backlinks. no server errors. no changes to robots or canonicals. competitors hadn't done anything obviously aggressive.

11 days later: back at position 2. as if nothing had happened.

traffic loss during those 11 days was significant. about 34% of monthly organic traffic to that page disappeared. then came back.

i've spoken to other practitioners about this and the most common explanation i get is "google flux" or "algorithm testing." but 11 days feels too long to be ordinary flux. and the precision of returning to exactly position 2 rather than some adjacent position suggests whatever google did it had a clean undo state.

my best guess — and it's only a guess — is that google temporarily tested a different page from a different site in that position and reverted when the signals didn't work out. but i have no way to verify this.

has anyone experienced a ranking disappearance this complete for this long and found an actual explanation for it

I’m using it like this:

Homepage:

✅ Organization Schema

Blog Page:

✅ Article Schema

✅ FAQ Schema (if needed)

Product Page:

✅ Product Schema

✅ FAQ Schema (if needed)

Service Page:

✅ Service Schema

✅ FAQ Schema (if needed)

Location Page:

✅ Local Business Schema

Looking for expert SEO advice on our website structure and homepage targeting strategy.

We’re a digital agency based in Mississauga**, Ontario**, offering multiple services including:

• Web Development
• Web Design
• Digital Marketing
• Software Development
• Other digital solutions

Right now, our homepage is primarily optimized around location-based keywords like:

• Web Development Mississauga
• Web Design Mississauga

This has been working well — these pages rank and generate good traffic.

Now we want to expand our reach beyond Mississauga/Toronto and position ourselves as serving businesses across all of Canada.

Our current thought process:

• Shift homepage optimization toward service-focused keywords (example: Web Development Services, Custom Web Design, Digital Marketing Services)
• Still mention locations naturally within content for local relevance
• Avoid location-heavy H1/headings so users don’t feel we only serve Mississauga/Toronto
• Create/expand dedicated location landing pages for specific cities across Canada
• Add service-focused pages in the main header navigation
• Create a separate “Locations” tab with city-specific pages underneath

Since our strongest-performing pages are currently those linked directly in the header, we’re trying to plan this carefully without hurting rankings.

Main questions:

1. Should we keep the homepage locally optimized for Mississauga since it’s already performing well?
2. Is shifting the homepage to broader service-focused keywords the right move for national expansion?
3. Would it be smarter to keep local homepage targeting and build separate national service pages?
4. Has anyone successfully transitioned from strong local rankings to broader national visibility without traffic loss?

Would really appreciate advice from anyone who has handled this type of SEO transition.

been doing recovery audits since the last core update hit a bunch of client sites. started keeping notes on what the pages that actually bounced back had in common because i kept seeing a pattern i couldn't explain.

the pages that recovered fastest not the sites overall, specifically the individual pages were almost all pages where someone was clearly named as the author. not just a byline. an actual author page with credentials, a photo, a short bio, and links to their professional profiles or published work elsewhere.

the pages that were still stuck 4-5 months later mostly had either no author information at all, or a generic byline with no supporting information.

i know google has been talking about E-E-A-T for years and this isn't news. but i was genuinely surprised by how cleanly this split played out across 20+ pages i looked at. it wasn't a subtle difference. it was stark.

the categories where it was most obvious: anything health-adjacent, financial, legal, and also this one surprised me home services and trades. local plumber and electrician sites with named, credentialed authors on their service area pages recovered faster than identical sites without that author signal.

the less obvious finding: it didn't seem to matter how long the author had been writing on the site. what mattered was whether the author had a credible external footprint linkedin, other publications, industry associations. a 3-month-old author with a real professional history outperformed a 3-year-old anonymous author consistently.

i don't know if this is causation or if sites that bother to set up proper author pages just tend to be better sites generally. might be completely confounded.

but i've added author page setup to the first month of every new client engagement now regardless of niche.

is anyone else seeing this pattern or is it just the sites that ended up in my audit queue

Some niches seem to be getting hit hard by AI Overviews pushing down organic results. Others seem unaffected or even growing.

If you've seen a change — good or bad — would love to know:
- Which niche / industry?
- Rough % traffic change since AI Overviews expanded?
- Did you change your content strategy in response?
- Are you now appearing IN the AI Overview or being pushed below it?

Any GSC screenshots or data welcome. Trying to build a picture of which sectors are most affected.

A common problem I see with local service businesses is that the owner has a Google Business Profile, a website, and some reviews, but they still barely show up on Google Maps.

Before jumping into backlinks, 30 city pages, or rewriting the whole website, I would check the boring basics first.

1. Verification status

First, is the Google Business Profile properly verified? Also, check if there are pending edits, warnings, or old info that never got approved. If the profile isn't clean, everything else becomes harder.

2. Primary category

The main category is very important. Many owners choose something too broad because it seems safer. But I would choose the most specifically accurate category for what the business mainly does. The services section can cover the extra details.

3. Business hours

Simple, but easy to miss. Wrong hours can hurt people's trust fast. Also check holiday hours or special hours if needed.

4. Address or service area setup

If customers visit the location, the address should be clear. If it's a service area business, the service area should match where the business really works. I wouldn't add random cities just because you want to rank there.

5. Reviews and review freshness

Review count is important, but freshness is important too. A business with 80 reviews from 3 years ago may look less active than a business with regular new reviews. I wuold also reply to reviews, even short replies. It makes the profile look alive.

6. Photos

Real photos help very much. Job photos, vehicles, team photos, storefront, before/after photos if it fits. A profile with old or stock-looking photos can feel weak.

7. Website service pages

The website should support the Google profile. If the profile says plumber, but the website only has one generic services page, that may not be clear enough. For example, important services like drain cleaning, water heater repair, leak repair, or emergency plumbing should be easy to find.

8. Name, address, and phone consistency

Check if the business name, phone number, address, and website are consistent across main places online. If Google sees mixed signals, it can create confusion.

9. Competitor comparison

I would also compare the business with the top 3 companies already showing in Maps, not just the website. Compare main category, reviews, recent reviews, photos, services, business hours, service pages, and how close they are to the searched area. Sometimes the gap is very obvious after this check.

What I wouldn't do first:

• start by buying random backlinks,
• make 30 thin city pages with the same text,
• rewrite the full website before checking the Google profile basics, and
• trust ranking tools only.

For local SEO people here, what do you check first when a business isnot showing up in Maps?

Quick recap of 5 useful SEO discussions from this week.

1. If Google disappeared tomorrow, what would SEO become?

This was probably the biggest AI search discussion this week. The strongest takeaway was that SEO would not fully disappear, but the reporting lens would change. Blogs, backlinks, keywords, and topical authority would still matter, but brand mentions, citations, Reddit, YouTube, reviews, and third-party trust would become much harder to ignore.

2. Is AI helping SEO or making it worse?

The split here was interesting. AI clearly helps with research, structure, briefs, outlines, and speed. But it also makes it easier to publish average content at scale. The useful distinction is AI as support vs AI as the whole strategy.

3. Bad AI SEO advice can create real damage

The sports site case was a good warning. The issue was not just “AI advice is bad,” but that big technical or indexing changes should not be made blindly. If a page had impressions, clicks, or real search demand before, removing it from Google can hurt fast.

4. AI keyword research is still messy

A good question came up around how to do keyword research for ChatGPT and AI bots. There still is not a clean “AI search volume” tool, so people are using Reddit/forum questions, customer language, prompt testing, Perplexity suggestions, and brand visibility tracking instead.

5. CTR testing is still one of the fastest SEO wins

The title tag test was a nice break from all the AI talk. Rewriting titles around a stronger reason to click improved CTR without needing ranking changes. That is a good reminder that SEO is not only about moving positions, sometimes the win is getting more clicks from the visibility you already have.

We'll keep doing these if people find them useful.

I write articles, develop the site, submit pages for indexing in Google Search Console… and then what? It feels like I’m just repeating the same loop every week and it’s getting really boring.

What do you guys actually do day2day to grow organic? Besides just creating more content and hoping Google ranks it.

I’m not sure what else I should be improving, technical stuff, backlinks, on page optimization, analytics, internal linking, etc? Would really appreciate your routines and practical tips.

Thanks in advance!

We don't want r/SEO_Xpert to become another generic SEO subreddit where every post is just about "how do I rank?" or "is SEO dead?" The goal should be more practical than that.

After two weeks of trying to help build this sub, I think a few discussion lanes are starting to make sense:

• Link audits: Not just toxic link cleanup, but how to find wasted authority and improve internal paths from linked pages.
• Technical prioritization: Not every audit warning matters equally. I’d like to see more posts about what people fix first, what they ignore, and why.
• AI search visibility: Not hype posts only. More useful would be examples of what gets cited, what gets ignored, and how people are tracking it.
• Local SEO: GBP issues, local pack visibility, reviews, service pages, and what actually moves leads for small businesses.
• Content distribution: Not only publishing more content, but how people get content seen after it goes live.
• International SEO: hreflang, country targeting, multilingual content, regional backlinks, and SERP differences by market.

What we would like to see more of here is real SEO questions with context. And not just about wins, promo, and "what tool should I use?"

More posts like:

What changed? What did you test? What happened after? What are you unsure about? What would you do differently?

If you work on SEO and want a practical place to compare notes, we would like this sub to become that.

My website last 28 days GSC performance is
Total impression : 162k
Total click 396
Average position 7.5
Average CTR 0.2

Around 1 lakh impression is from a calculator tool click on that tool is 139 but other pages are also not performing good.

Even after removing the tool impressions and click the average ctr .42

Average CTR is too low and average position also. I have launched this website a 45days ago.

Please give me suggestions to improve my ctr and average position.