What SEO covers in our work
SEO is how a site earns a place in Google’s results, and it is the base the rest of our inbound work stands on.
The short answer
SEO is three jobs done in order: audit the site so search engines can crawl and understand it, decide which searches it should own, and structure the content so authority builds in one place. It is the slowest inbound discipline to move and the most durable.
It sits underneath AEO and GEO. Answer engines read the same crawlable pages that search engines do, so a site that cannot be crawled cleanly starts weak in both. If you want the commercial view of the inbound programme, see our AEO and GEO service.
The workstream
Three stages, each one feeding the next
The order matters: fixing the site first means every page written afterwards starts from a sound base.
- 1
Foundation
Technical audit
A live crawl of the real site, with findings ranked by business consequence.
- 2
Targeting
Keyword research
Decide which searches to own and brief a page that deserves to win each one.
- 3
Structure
Content architecture
Pillars, clusters and assets that build authority in one place.
The technical audit
A technical audit is a live crawl of the real site that finds what stops pages being found, understood or trusted, then ranks the findings by what they cost the business.
Indexing and crawlability
robots.txt, noindex tags, sitemap accuracy, canonicals, redirect chains and broken pages. If a page cannot be crawled or indexed, nothing else about it matters.
Page structure
One H1 per page, logical headings, and unique titles and descriptions, so each page says plainly what it is about.
Structured data
Whether schema exists, whether it is valid, and whether it states things that are true of the page.
Internal links
Orphan pages, pages buried deep in the site, and links that point nowhere useful.
Content depth
Thin or duplicate pages that dilute a site rather than support it.
Ranked by consequence
Findings are ordered by business impact, not checklist order. A sitewide noindex outranks a missing alt tag every time.
The rules we build to
These are the standing rules every page we publish has to meet, so the site stays sound as it grows instead of decaying after the audit.
60 / 155
Character ceilings for page titles and meta descriptions
3 clicks
Maximum distance from the homepage to any page
48 hours
To give every new page at least three internal links
301
Redirect for every retired URL, documented and tested
| Rule | Why we hold to it |
|---|---|
| Titles under 60 characters, descriptions under 155 | Longer text is truncated in results, so the end of the sentence is lost. |
| Nothing more than three clicks from the homepage | Pages buried deep are crawled less often and receive less internal authority. |
| At least three internal links to a new page within 48 hours | A page nothing links to is an orphan, and orphans are hard for crawlers to find and get little authority. |
| A 301 for every retired URL, documented before go-live and tested after | It carries visits and links from the old address to the new one instead of leaving a dead end. |
| Anchor text that describes the destination | We write “cold email deliverability”, never “read more”, so readers and crawlers know what is on the other side. |
Keyword research in six steps
Keyword research decides which searches you should own, then briefs the page that deserves to win each one. It starts from how the buyer phrases the problem, not from your internal words.
Buyers of a “digital transformation consultancy” search for something far more specific, so we start there and then work through six steps.
Collect
Keyword tools, Search Console, competitor pages that actually rank, and the questions buyers ask on calls.Qualify
Check volume, difficulty and trend for each term. Falling demand is not worth a page.Sort by intent
Learn, compare or buy. Each intent maps to a different page type: guide, comparison or service page.Apply the AI Overview split
Check whether Google shows an AI Overview for each term. The answer changes the brief, as set out below.Cluster and map
Group terms into clusters and map each cluster to one page, so two of your own pages never compete for the same search.Build and measure
Publish, then watch impressions, position and clicks in Search Console and adjust.
The AI Overview split
One keyword, two different jobs. Whether Google shows an AI Overview for a term decides what the page is built to do.
AI Overview shown
Brief the page to be cited inside the answer: a short, extractable answer up top, question-form headings and sourced claims. See how AEO works.
No AI Overview
Brief the page to win the click: a compelling title and description, depth that earns the visit and a clear next step.
Worked example: our own site
We ran this process on deligatr.ai. Every keyword was checked for volume, difficulty, trend and AI Overview presence. We cut terms with collapsing demand, and terms dominated by entrenched incumbents where demand was also falling.
Our own site
From 740 qualified keywords to 8 pillar hubs
Not to scale: the stages narrow to show the sequence.
Source: Deligatr’s own keyword working files for deligatr.ai.
We would rather build twenty pages that can win than a hundred that cannot.
Hub-and-spoke content architecture
Hub and spoke means one pillar page owns the head term, clusters support it, and assets sit beneath the clusters, so authority builds in one place instead of leaking across the site.
Illustrative structure
How a pillar, its clusters and its assets link
Pillars link down to every cluster, every cluster links back up, and assets link to their cluster and siblings.
Pillar
Owns the head term
Links down to every cluster beneath it
Cluster A
One supporting topic
Links up to the pillar
- Answer
- Glossary term
- Tool
Cluster B
One supporting topic
Links up to the pillar
- Answer
- Comparison
- Template
Cluster C
One supporting topic
Links up to the pillar
- Answer
- Glossary term
- Data
Assets link to their cluster and to their siblings. Every cluster links back up to the pillar.
Every industry we write for gets its own pillar built this way. See industry-based inbound and the live pages under industries.
The asset layer
Assets are the formats that give a young site a way to earn visibility without waiting for a large backlink profile. We build six.
Answer library
One page per real buyer question. The URL is the question and the answer sits in the first 60 words: short, exact and quotable.
Glossary
One term per page, definition first, cross-linked. Highly quotable, and the internal-linking engine of the site.
Templates
Browsable, filterable libraries rather than listicles. People bookmark and link to a useful library.
Tools
Free, ungated calculators and diagnostics that show their method. Useful tools earn links and attention without an established brand.
Comparisons
Model and approach comparisons at the decision point, matching the searches buyers make just before choosing.
Original data
Findings from real measured work, published with sample sizes. Originality stands in for authority.
Each asset links to its cluster and its siblings, which is what keeps the architecture above intact as the library grows.
How this connects to the rest of the system
SEO is one part of the inbound programme, and the work here feeds the pages that follow.
- AEO and GEO documentation: getting named inside AI answers, and how models describe you.
- AEO and GEO service and our AI visibility research: the commercial view of the same work.
- Visitor identification: every visitor the new content attracts is identified from day one.
- The audit: where every engagement starts.
- Pricing: SEO is part of the Inbound package. See also the Pricing tab.
- Back to the documentation overview, or browse by industry.
Questions about SEO
The questions we are asked most often about the SEO side of the work.
Do we still need SEO if we are focusing on AI search?
Yes. Search engines and AI assistants both read crawlable pages, so a site that cannot be crawled and understood cleanly has a weak start in both. We treat SEO as the foundation and AEO and GEO as the layer built on it.
How long does SEO take to work?
SEO is the slowest inbound discipline to move and the most durable. A page that ranks keeps earning visits long after the work that put it there. We do not promise rankings or a date for them. We report impressions, positions and clicks from Search Console as they move.
How many keywords do you target?
As many as can realistically win and no more. On our own site we qualified 740 keywords, grouped them into 14 clusters and built 8 pillar hubs, cutting terms with collapsing demand. We would rather build twenty pages that can win than a hundred that cannot.
What is an orphan page and why does it matter?
An orphan page is a page that no other page links to. Crawlers struggle to find it and it receives little internal authority. Our rule is that every new page gets at least three internal links within 48 hours of publishing.
What happens to old URLs when a site is restructured?
Every retired URL gets a 301 redirect to its closest replacement. The redirect map is documented before go-live and tested after, so nothing that earned visits or links is left pointing at a dead page.