AI is now embedded in how many teams write and publish content. The risk isn’t the technology itself, but how easily it encourages sameness. From a sub-editor’s perspective, the challenge is using AI to improve clarity and efficiency without losing judgement, distinctiveness, or responsibility for what gets published.

SEO is often treated as a default solution, but it isn’t always the right place to start. Before worrying about rankings or traffic, it’s worth asking what problem you’re actually trying to solve, and whether SEO is the tool that will genuinely help.

The new ‘Read more…’ SERP feature exposes which words Google chooses to speak for your brand. By showing the exact snippet source, it highlights a shift away from page-level optimisation towards passage selection, and why some strong rankings deliver visibility rather than traffic.

Growing an online publishing brand is harder than it used to be, but not for the reasons people often assume. Effort hasn’t disappeared, it’s just easier to misdirect. In many cases, progress comes not from doing more, but from focusing more deliberately on what actually pays back.

The question “What is SEO?” is the one I’m asked most often by family and friends (sometimes phrased as “so what exactly is it that you do?”). In some ways, it’s really easy to answer, but dig a little deeper and it gets a bit … Continue reading What is SEO in 2026?

Every so often, something surfaces from Google’s black box of algorithms that makes SEOs sit up straight. The recent Google leak did exactly that, and tucked away inside it was one particularly revealing signal: contentEffort. It’s a machine-learning metric that attempts to quantify how much genuine human effort went into … Continue reading How to score high with Google’s Content Effort signal

I have started offering a special rate for charities and other nonprofit organisations for my SEO and content services, and dedicate 0.5 days a week to local volunteer work. There are a number of reasons behind this. One is that I was recently approached by … Continue reading SEO for charities and nonprofits

“So once you know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.“ Deep Thought, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) In Douglas Adams’ fabulous 𝘏𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘩𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘎𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘹𝘺, a race of hyper-intelligent beings builds a supercomputer named Deep Thought … Continue reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to SEO: User Intent Phase

How do you decide whether your business needs SEO assistance? I’ve got a prompt for that. One of the problems when dealing something that is described as ‘dark arts’ is knowing whether your business needs it or not. Does your business need SEO assistance? Here … Continue reading Is your business ready for SEO help? This AI prompt will help you decide