The Edward Show

E1027: Tryggvi Rafn rejoins the show to screenshare (on YouTube) the AI-powered SEO system he built from scratch over four months. This is not another "AI writes blog posts" workflow. The system is designed to discover, prioritize, and build revenue-driving pages automatically, using a combination of data pipelines, keyword clustering, and agent-based workflows. We walk through how it works end-to...

E1026: Breaking down common SEO crawling myths and explaining why "crawl budget" is usually not the real problem. We talk about crawling, indexing, authority, sitemaps, content pruning, duplicate content, and cannibalization. The legendary David Quaid, our guest, explains why more crawling does not mean better rankings, why XML sitemaps do not magically fix indexing issues, and why authority is of...

E1025: Matt Diamante breaks down how he built a simple one-page tool that ranked #1 on Google with almost no content and no traditional SEO work. The site is LinkGap.io, a backlink gap analysis tool he built in a single afternoon using AI. It has roughly 35 words on the page, no meta description, no analytics, and almost no backlinks - yet it ranks and generates thousands of leads. This conversati...

1024: An experienced SEO practitioner and an AI search founder debate what gets a brand surfaced inside large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. The conversation starts with a core disagreement: is generative engine optimization just an extension of SEO, or is it a fundamentally different discipline? From there, it expands into how AI systems actually produce answers, what "query fa...

E1023: How Google Discover works and why it can outperform traditional SEO by a massive margin. Google Discover isn't driven by search queries. It's driven by attention. If you understand how to stop the scroll, you can unlock traffic levels that most publishers never reach. This episode is based on insights from Guilhem Chauvin, along with real-world experience publishing daily content and testin...

E1022: Patrick Stox of Ahrefs breaks down what actually matters in SEO right now and what doesn't. We cover a wide range of topics, from technical SEO and internal linking to AI content, programmatic SEO, and the growing conversation around GEO and large language models. Patrick shares practical insights from working on some of the largest websites in the world and building SEO tools used by thous...

E1021: A simple SEO strategy built around Google's "People Also Ask" questions - and how to turn them into a system for building topical authority, generating consistent traffic, and driving real conversions. Most marketers either ignore these questions or treat them as an afterthought. This episode shows how to structure them into a scalable content framework that not only ranks, but also feeds a...

E1020: If you're early in your SEO career and feel like you're constantly bouncing between conflicting advice, this episode is for you. A 22-year-old working at an agency asked a simple but important question:
 "What would you do if you had to start over today?" This episode breaks down a practical, no-theory answer. Not a perfect plan. Not a motivational speech. 
A real approach for someone worki...

E1019: One of the most uncomfortable truths in SEO: yes, duplicate content can still rank - and in some cases, it can even OUTRANK the original. I walk through real experiments, what Google actually does when it finds duplicate pages, and why higher authority sites can take your content and win in the search results. We also cover the common misconception around a "duplicate content penalty," what...

E1018: An SEO test removed FAQ schema from product listing pages - here's what happened next. For years, FAQ schema has been treated as a best practice in SEO. It helped pages stand out in search results, increased click-through rates, and was widely adopted across marketing pages. But after Google reduced the visibility of FAQ rich results in 2023, the question became: Does FAQ schema still matte...

1017: Breaking down the latest changes in Google Search and what they mean for publishers, SEO teams, and content-driven businesses. We cover the first-ever Google Discover-specific update, the March 2026 core and spam updates, and what's really happening with AI-generated content in search. This is a practical discussion based on real observations. Edward is joined by Gagan Ghotra, Harpreet Singh...

E1016: A real-world SEO case study where a website was completely removed from Google's index overnight. No rankings. No pages. Gone. At first glance, it looked like a classic case of AI content abuse or a penalty tied to scaled content. The site operated in a YMYL niche, had tens of thousands of URLs, and included some AI-assisted content - so the initial assumption seemed obvious. But that wasn'...

E1015: Why niching down is one of the most effective ways to make SEO easier and more profitable. Most people approach SEO by trying to target everything at once. They go after broad categories, spread their content too thin, and end up competing with bigger players without any real advantage. Instead, the better strategy is to focus on a narrow niche, dominate it completely, and then expand outwa...

E1014: The single biggest productivity mistake that quietly destroys SEO results: not taking structured breaks. This is not about working less. It's about working in a way that actually produces better pages, better strategy, and better outcomes. If you are writing SEO landing pages, doing keyword research, auditing sites, or building out a content strategy, this directly impacts your results. Whe...

E1012: How IBM managed to rank at the top of Google for some of the most competitive keywords in the world, including "AI," "AI agent," and "what is AI." We go through a real case study of IBM's content strategy, based on analysis from Lars Lofgren, and look at what they're doing right, what they're getting away with, and what you can apply to your own SEO strategy. This is one of the clearest exa...

E1013: Breaking down a simple but widely misunderstood idea in SEO: internal links are not "set and forget." Most people treat internal linking as something you do once when you publish a page. David argues the opposite. If you are not revisiting and adjusting your internal links regularly, you are likely wasting authority and slowing down your ability to rank new pages. The core idea is straightf...

E1011: Why the rise of AI-built ("vibe coded") websites is going to make SEO easier, despite the slight increase in websites properly targeting keywords. Most people think AI will increase competition because it makes it faster to create pages targeting keywords. That part is true. But they're missing the more important point: most AI-generated pages are not built to convert, and that creates an o...

E1010: Jabez Reuben joins the show to talk about what is working in SEO, especially as search changes with LLMs, AI overviews, and shifting Google results. We get into why Chiang Mai has become such a strong place for SEO, how Jabez got started in the industry after moving there, and why the local community helped shape the way he works. From there, we go deep into his approach to SEO: keep it sim...

E1009: Sarvesh Shrivastava joins the show once again to break down how a garage door company went from struggling for leads to generating $1.7M in revenue - using Sarvesh's focused local SEO strategy. This is a real case study with exact steps, decisions, and systems that were implemented over 11 months. We cover what moved the needle, what most business owners get wrong, and how to approach local...

E1008: break down what we're seeing so far from Google's March Core Update - and how to interpret the data correctly. This update is still rolling out, but several patterns are already becoming clear. There was a reporting issue in Semrush between April 2nd and April 4th that showed large traffic spikes across many sites.  These spikes are not reflected in Google Search Console. I walk through wha...

E1007: The exact local SEO strategy that helped a garage door company turn $18,000 into $1.7 million in just 11 months. This is based on a real case study from Sarvesh Shrivastava, who will be joining the podcast once again soon. I go through Sarvesh's full written breakdown and add my own insights on what worked, why it worked, and how you can apply the same approach. These are practical SEO acti...

E1006: Mr. David Quaid joins the podcast for a deep, practical discussion about what is really working in SaaS SEO right now. Edward and David start with audience questions on link building and break down the real risk-to-reward tradeoffs behind different approaches. David explains why relying too heavily on domain authority misses the bigger picture, why page-level context matters more than most...

E1005: How to get high-quality backlinks for health websites. I came across a discussion from someone struggling to compete with sites that have thousands of backlinks, many of them low quality. This episode walks through what matters in YMYL niches like health, and why chasing volume is often the wrong approach. If you understand the principles in this episode, you can apply them to any niche whe...

E1004: Answering listener questions about some of the biggest topics in SEO right now: AI writing, outbound links, ranking without backlinks, and whether SEO is still worth doing. I talk through when it makes sense to link out from your content, including blog posts and bottom-of-funnel pages, and why linking to useful sources can make your content more credible. I also explain how I think about c...

E1003: Breaking down an SEO video funnel that can work especially well for high-ticket offers. You create short videos that answer real top-of-funnel keywords people already have. Those videos rank and send people to a form. The form qualifies them. AI buckets the leads. Then, before the sales call, you automatically send follow-up videos tailored to the type of prospect they are. This works well...