SEO: Still the foundation of everything in the AI era

What does an SEO agency do?

Google’s own framework has three parts: the technical requirements a page needs to appear in Search, the spam policies that can lower rankings or remove a site, and the key best practices that improve how a site appears^{[2]Source 2: Google Search EssentialsGoogle Search EssentialsGoogle Search Centralaccessed: 26 September 2026}. An SEO agency’s job is to check and fix your site across all three, continuously.

The maps side is covered on the Local GEO page.

What do we check in technical SEO?

First we make sure Google can see the page: are links crawlable, is the important content in the initial HTML, are the right pages indexed? Then we measure speed. By the Core Web Vitals thresholds, the largest content should render within 2.5 seconds (LCP), interactions should respond within 200 milliseconds (INP) and layout shift should stay below 0.1 (CLS)^{[4]Source 4: Web VitalsWeb Vitalsweb.devaccessed: 26 September 2026}. INP replaced FID in March 2024^{[5]Source 5: Interaction to Next Paint becomes a Core Web Vital on March 12Interaction to Next Paint becomes a Core Web Vital on March 12web.devaccessed: 26 September 2026}.

• Crawling and indexing: robots.txt, sitemaps, canonical URLs, duplicates
• Rendering: server-side output for JavaScript-dependent content
• Structure: internal links, breadcrumbs, hreflang on multilingual sites
• Speed: Core Web Vitals, image and font optimisation

What does “written for people” mean?

Google suggests looking at who created the content, how it was made and why: is the author clear, how was it produced, is the main purpose to help readers^{[3]Source 3: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first contentCreating helpful, reliable, people-first contentGoogle Search Centralaccessed: 26 September 2026}? We put an author, a last-updated date and a source list on every page; the pages on this site are the example.

We work from a question map rather than a keyword list: the words your customers use go into the heading and first paragraph, and each question gets one strong answer page^{[2]Source 2: Google Search EssentialsGoogle Search EssentialsGoogle Search Centralaccessed: 26 September 2026}.

Why we do not buy links

Buying or selling links to manipulate rankings breaks Google’s spam policies; paid links for advertising are fine only when marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow"^{[6]Source 6: Spam policies for Google web searchSpam policies for Google web searchGoogle Search Centralaccessed: 26 September 2026}. So we never buy links. We create data, expert commentary and reference content that deserve to be mentioned.

Mass-producing low-value pages, with AI tools or otherwise, is also listed in the same policies as scaled content abuse^{[6]Source 6: Spam policies for Google web searchSpam policies for Google web searchGoogle Search Centralaccessed: 26 September 2026}.

How do you keep rankings through a redesign?

Every URL that changes gets a permanent (301 or 308) server-side redirect to its new address. The old-to-new mapping is prepared before the move, and redirects are kept for at least a year^{[7]Source 7: Site moves with URL changesSite moves with URL changesGoogle Search Centralaccessed: 26 September 2026}. Internal links are updated and the new sitemap is submitted in Search Console^{[7]Source 7: Site moves with URL changesSite moves with URL changesGoogle Search Centralaccessed: 26 September 2026}.

What should you check when choosing an SEO agency?

• An agency that guarantees rankings is promising something it does not control.
• Search Console, Analytics and domain accounts should be in your name; the agency should only be a user.
• Ask directly whether they buy links. If yes, the risk sits on your site.
• Monthly reports should list the work done and the measurement method, not just charts.
• Ask how they measure your visibility in AI answers.

What we need from you, what we deliver