Over the last three months, my team and I have been working on the SEO of a Shopify eCommerce store, and it's another reminder that sustainable SEO is built on systems, not shortcuts. Instead of chasing quick rankings, we focused on creating a strong technical foundation first. During the first month, we audited every important SEO issue, including crawlability, indexation, internal linking, duplicate content, page speed, structured data, and collection page optimization. We also mapped keywords based on user intent rather than simply targeting high search volume.

Once the technical issues were resolved, we shifted our attention to building topical authority. We created content clusters that answered the questions customers actually search for before purchasing, connected those articles to collection and product pages, and improved the overall site architecture. This helped Google better understand the store's expertise within its niche while also improving the user experience.

The final stage focused on authority. We earned niche-relevant backlinks, built brand mentions, and continued refining pages using Google Search Console data. Instead of publishing random content, every new article supported a commercial page, helping strengthen the site's overall topical relevance.

This is a condensed version of my full write-up (will leave a link at the end).

I launched CardShows.io in the middle of March on a brand-new domain.

Last week it reached:

• 17,755 total page views
• 5,709 Google clicks
• 237,600 Google impressions
• Around $230/month in AdSense revenue

I built the site because I collect trading cards and couldn’t find one reliable place listing local card shows.

I tried building it out in 2025, but wasn't able to get the backend website (admin dashboard, user dashboard, etc) and data right. I tried again with Claude Code in February 2026 and had an MVP roughly a week later.

Building the website itself was actually pretty simple with vibe coding. Getting good data was the tough part.

I spent around 80% of my initial effort discovering shows, verifying dates, removing duplicates, standardizing locations, and finding organizers, social profiles, ticket links, and images. I now use Hermes to help repeat that process across every state each month.

The SEO strategy was straightforward:

1. Create useful pages for specific events.
2. Target the long tail first.
3. Link event pages into city, region, and state hubs.
4. Actively work on indexation.
5. Improve the hubs as they begin ranking for broader searches.

The site went from around 100 indexed pages after its first week to roughly 9,100 today.

What I'm working on now is monetization and building out more features. I'm at $230/m at the current pace of Adsense revenue, and advertisers are starting to roll in. I'm investing more time in improving the actual advertising flow to make it super easy to promote card shows.

I posted about it on X if you wanna check out a bit more detail. If you have 15 minutes, you can read the full case study here.

Happy to answer questions!

Curious to hear how others evaluate content quality beyond just rankings and traffic.

I have several sites where i run agentic SEO

The way i do it is: i made a skill for Claude Code to analyze content, GSC metrics, and pagespeed.

I run this weekly and i already see some improvements (very nodest, but i got from 0-1 click per day to about average 10 per day in about month and a half).

My question is how do you guys do it? Is my method good enough or should i add something etc? How could i improve it?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

I wrote in the past few weeks that AEO, GEO and SEO are going through a metamorphosis, and that they will merge into the de facto visibility or distribution term some people are already using.

My belief is that one cannot exist without the other. People will soon treat visibility and online presence in all its nuances, from pure search, which is happening less and less often, to being surfaced in an AI Overview, all the way up to being referenced, compared and cited inside an LLM.

I think about this the same way mobile worked 10 years ago. Back then people had a requirement for their website to "also be mobile friendly". Now it is the default approach for any website.

A few of the findings I keep writing about in my newsletter come down to a handful of interconnected components that cover all three aspects of surfacing online:

• Page health and quality: align your website with the standards SEO already asks for (meta title, meta description, JSON schema, proper tags, proper sitemap, robots, and so on).
• Internal linking and navigability: make sure your site is easy to move through and does not lead to dead ends.
• Content authority: your content should be fresh enough and authoritative enough to add something to the topic or niche you are in. Summaries of existing content seem to get penalized. On the same note, listicles and summary snippets seem to help with surfacing.

These are low hanging fruits, and my bet is that they become the default in the time to come. I have been watching this on my own site, where Copilot citations increased 8x in three months.

Opinions are of course welcome.

Hi all,
I created a product that helps turn your git commits into long form blog posts.

The tool will be launched soon

You can sign here for early access -

b2b.gittomarket.io

Would love to hear your feedback on this idea and how you like the features that will make your money and time worth while.

Hey everyone,

I learned the basics of SEO and I am pretty good with technical SEO (because of my dev background). I'm trying to figure out if it's actually worth putting effort into SEO for my dad's local clearing and cleaning business (it’s a new company and he is taking a lot of risk, so I’m trying to help where possible). He operates a heavy-duty truck for things like unblocking drains, septic tank pumping, and industrial cleaning.

Here is how I'm breaking down the options, and I'd love a sanity check on whether my strategy makes sense:
Blogs are useless here: Nobody reads a blog post about septic maintenance when their toilet is actively overflowing. High-intent, emergency search is everything.

On-Page SEO (Regional Pages):I feel like the only viable route is creating local regional landing pages (e.g., targeting surrounding towns). Since I have a technical background, I can semi-automate this using Semrush data as input and AI to generate the structure. Is this worth doing?

Off-Page SEO: Traditional link building can't really be automated easily and feels like way too much manual work for a local blue-collar business. Am I safe skipping this entirely?

Do you guys have any recommendations on other stuff to do? We are also talking about a small market, the company is based in belgium and is location limited.

Would appreciate any help!