Guides
Plain explanations of the problems I'm hired to fix, written for 2026 and kept up to date. Each one stands on its own, and each ends with how I handle the problem for clients.
AI search
- Build a website incident timeline: a practical method with an illustrative example and verification steps.
- B2B catalog SEO for technical buyers: select a product family, improve specifications, and measure useful inquiries.
- How to fact check a confident AI answer about SEO: split the answer into claims, grade each by its source, trace every number, and test on your own data.
- Measure AI citations, referrals, and leads: provider reports, identifiable visits, repeatable answer checks, and attribution limits.
- IndexNow, Bing, and an AI search publishing workflow: verify releases, notify participating engines, and syndicate full articles.
- How AI assistants decide what to say about your business: training data versus live retrieval, which search indexes feed ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot, the crawlers behind them, and what to do this quarter.
- Structured data in 2026: which schema markup is worth adding: the rich results that remain, the ones Google retired, and building an entity graph that search engines and assistants can trust.
- Repositories plus super intelligence: the SEO superpower: why SEOs need Git and AI coding assistants together, what it looks like in practice, and how to start.
- How to give an outside SEO safe access to your code repository: one repository, the Read role first, protected main, deploy previews, no secrets, and a clean exit.
- How to use AI coding assistants on a business website safely: specs, project memory, automated checks, review, and keeping secrets and production out of reach.
- Citation gap analysis: collect the sources AI cites when it names your competitors, sort them by type, and rank the ones that leave you out.
- Content briefs for pages AI search will quote: the question, the expert's answer, the evidence, and the page's limits, settled before anyone writes.
- Your public GitHub README is a source AI reads: keep it current, point it to the live site, and keep private notes out.
Diagnosis
- How to diagnose a Google traffic drop in Search Console: confirm the drop, find where it is, line it up with dates, and name the cause.
- When two problems hit at once, keep them on separate tracks: spot a drop with two causes, give each its own evidence and test, and join them only on proof.
- Your Google business reports are getting a new scoreboard: the five new performance sections in owner language, why falling clicks can mislead, and a monthly routine.
- Deleting hundreds of location pages: why core rankings fall: rebuild the inventory, line up the dates, decide every URL, and restore the internal paths.
- SEO 101: a first principles primer for any website: how search works, people-first content, E-E-A-T, titles, descriptive links, alt text, speed, accessibility, and a first week plan.
- Ranking yourself first in a best list now backfires: how self-ranked agency lists steered AI answers, why that is ending, and what earns a real recommendation.
- The state of search in 2026: every Google core and spam update this year, the new rule against manipulating AI answers, and what Bing and ChatGPT now report.
- Build a podcast website with Codex or Claude Code, GitHub Pages, and Cloudflare: a domain at cost, free hosting, a page for every episode, and a site that updates itself.
- Podcast SEO: get every episode found in Google and AI search: episode pages on your own domain, transcripts in the HTML, schema, alt text, and fast indexing.
- Podcasting as an investment in being found by AI search: show notes copied by hundreds of directories, AI answers quoting them for years, and a back catalog that compounds.
- Starting a podcast to build your brand: the commitment, a pocket recorder or a phone, free hosting, and the AI tools that clear away the chores.
- The year-end SEO check: one afternoon of indexing, sitemap, analytics, domain, listing, and AI answer checks that protects next year.
- "Crawled, currently not indexed": what it means and how to fix it: a method for finding the real cause behind Search Console's most misunderstood status.
- How to tell if JavaScript is hiding your content from Google and AI: five tests, the common causes, and the fixes developers can ship.
- A Next.js SEO checklist for the App Router: metadata, title templates, streamed metadata and AI crawlers, sitemap.ts, robots.ts, 308 redirects, real 404s, JSON-LD, and links.
- How to add SEO regression tests to your website's build: the checks worth automating, a minimal example, and how to roll them out without blocking developers.
- React hydration errors and what they mean for SEO: what error #418 means, why Google usually still indexes the page, the real costs, and how to find every one.
- ADA website compliance for businesses: the six fixes that cover most of the legal risk, what to skip, and the search and AI benefits that come with them.
- The European Accessibility Act for US companies: who it covers since June 28, 2025, the microenterprise exemption, and what to fix first.
- Lynx for website QA: scripted text browser checks for thin pages, stray noindex tags, and broken links before every launch.
Technical SEO
- Canonical tags: how Google chooses which URL to index: the signals Google weighs, the Search Console statuses, and the mistakes that send rankings to the wrong page.
- How robots.txt works, and the mistakes that cost traffic: matching rules, crawling versus indexing, status codes, and AI crawlers.
- Faceted navigation SEO: filters, parameters, and crawl budget: which filter pages to index and how to keep the rest out of the crawl.
- hreflang for English-language sites serving the US, UK, Canada, and Australia: the codes, the return links, and the errors that void them.
Speed and infrastructure
- Core Web Vitals explained: LCP, INP, CLS, and the fixes that work: field data versus lab data, and what moves each number.
- Diagnosing Core Web Vitals with MCP and an AI coding assistant: Chrome DevTools traces, CrUX field data, and Screaming Frog across every template.
- Cloudflare settings that help or hurt SEO and AI crawlers: proxying, bot protection, AI crawler controls, caching, HTTPS, and edge redirects.
- What Cloudflare's cache leaves exposed on a WordPress site: the traffic that still reaches your server, and how to harden logins, XML-RPC, plugins, and backups.
- Speculation rules for instant page loads: prefetch or prerender, which eagerness to pick, and what to exclude.
- Website restore drills: rebuild the site from its backup on a quiet afternoon, time it, and fix the gaps before an emergency finds them.
Migrations and redirects
- The website migration SEO checklist: the URL inventory, the 301 redirect map, launch day, and the weeks after.
- The SEO tools for a website migration: crawlers, Search Console, redirect testing, and crawl comparison, matched to the job each one does.
- Traffic fell after a site migration: how to get it back: rebuild the old URL list, test every redirect, compare old and new pages, and fix in order of value.
- How to freeze an old website as static HTML without losing a single link: retire a dead CMS by counting every address, keeping paths exactly, carrying feeds over, and cutting over in a safe order.
- How to plan 301 redirects that keep your rankings and links: which redirect to use, mapping, implementation by platform, testing, and how long to keep them.
Analytics
- Google Consent Mode v2 for GA4: a practical setup guide: the four signals, basic and advanced mode, regional defaults, and how to verify it.
Email and domains
- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for every domain that sends email: what each record does, the Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft requirements, and how to reach enforcement safely.
- Why business email lands in spam, and how to find the cause: headers, authentication failures, reputation, blocklists, and sending practices.
- How to get your email off a blocklist and back into the inbox: find the listing, fix the cause, request removal properly, rebuild your reputation, and avoid the paid removal scam.
- Domain security: the registrar account comes first: who holds the login, two-factor access, registrar and Registry Lock, renewals, and DNSSEC.
Privacy and reputation
- How to remove your personal information from data brokers and search: opt-outs, Google's Results about you, and California's DROP.
- How to vet an influencer or creator before your brand pays them: the archive, the audience, past disclosures and claims, identity, and the FTC rules that make the brand answerable.
Vendors, developers, and technology decisions
- Turn an SEO audit into developer tickets that get shipped: a practical workflow with explicit decisions and verifiable evidence.
- Test an AI pilot against real work: examples, expected behavior, retries, permissions, and a downloadable test case worksheet.
- A website handover beyond passwords and source code: account control, builds, data, renewals, and a restore exercise, with an inventory worksheet.
- How to vet an AI vendor's pitch before you sign anything: the SEC and FTC AI washing cases, twelve questions for the sales call, and a paid pilot with a scorecard.
- How to hire and manage developers when you can't read code yourself: own the accounts, interview for judgment, pay for a trial task, and review every change.
- Hype or real shift? Eight tests for judging a new technology wave: Amara's law, the hype cycle, and lessons from communities, blogs, social media, crypto, and AI.
- How to write a company AI use policy: approved tools, data that never goes in, human review, disclosure, and note-takers, in two pages.
Reference
- Glossary of SEO, AI search, and technical website terms: plain definitions, from 301 redirects to XML sitemaps.
- The site index: every person, company, tool, and problem on gerriscorp.com, A to Z, with the pages that cover each.
How these guides are written
Each guide answers one question completely, with the definitions and context needed to act on it, and carries the date it was last updated. They're written from the work itself: the problems clients bring me, the tests I run, and the fixes that hold.
New guides are announced in the full-text RSS feed or Atom feed.
Updated