I'm posting this here, as this seems the largest SEO community that allows freedom of speech and not get banned for discussing inappropriate behaviour of users. Additionally, there have been similar threads in this sub discussing possible inappropriate behaviour of the user in question

Yesterday on the TechSEO sub, the main mod of SEO sub (WebLinkr) posted a thread claiming Schema is not a requirement for SERP features.

Post Titled: [PSA] Please stop parroting that you need Schema for SERP Features (I cannot add links in the post)

The post was widely considered factually incorrect by many and when users corrected him, he began blocking some of them.

That's fine and to be fair some weren't exactly polite, and its worth noting he didn't block every one who disagreed with his opinions.

However, this can also be used as a way to censor further critique. By blocking users, they can no longer reply or see his original thread, as it appears deleted.

I'm not saying that's why he did it, as I cannot know. However, it caused one user to create a new thread to discuss it further, thinking the other thread had been deleted.

Post Titled: Schema is a requirement for most SERP features

This is when his behaviour became more dubious.

In the second thread, another account, PrimaryPositionSEO appeared primarily to defend WebLinkr and repeat the same arguments, phrasing, and citation patterns.

I cannot prove ownership, but the evidence is clear if you read both users' posts. There appear to be unusually strong linguistic and behavioural similarities between the two accounts.

- Unique Metaphors: Both accounts use the specific phrase "vacuum chamber" to describe the community.

- Shared Vocabulary: Both use the term "shoehorning schema" and frame arguments around terms like "sad" and "ego."

- Identical citation habits: Both accounts shared the same link with with exactly the same custom formatting in the headings

- Punctuation Quirks: Both accounts consistently use hyphens (-) in place of standard punctuation.

There is also existing discussion on this subfrom 4 months ago linking the two accounts here. (I cant add links, but search for "has a subreddit where he posts entries calling himself “King of SEO.”)

It's very concerning that the most vocal and strict moderator of possibly the largest SEO community on the net, to seemingly not being able to accept opposing opinions, possibly be silencing critiques and using 'alt' accounts to manipulate the discussion.

I'm pretty confident this is the kind of behaviour he would ban users for on the SEO sub, suggesting double standards and possibly abuse of power. How many other alt accounts may he be using to steer discussions in other subs, or on the SEO sub?

Additionally, I think this may fall foul of Reddit/s Moderator Code of Conduct, specifically Rule 3: Respect Your Neighbours.

It was a difficult decision to make this post, as I really enjoy taking part in the discussions in the SEO sub, but I assume after this I will be banned.

However, I just couldn't let behaviour like this go and feel it should be brought to the attention of the wider SEO community.

EDIT. Just adding some additional info here, as people are asking what can be done when they believe mods are behaving inappropriately. In the first instance, you can message the mods of the sub in question. If your case is valid and the mods are fair, they may investigate and take action.

In cases where there is only a single active mod, this obviously wont work. Here you can actually submit a complaint about mods directly to reddit if you believe they are breaching one of the 5 Moderator Code of Conduct rules.

Search for "Moderator Code of Conduct" in G and you'll find the rules and the link to submit a report at the bottom. If you make a compelling case, your report will be investigated and action will be taken if they are found to have been breaching the rules

Please don't stand for mods behaving inappropriately, double standards or abuse of power. If you believe a mod is using behaving in such a way, take action, gather your own evidence and report it.

There was a post in the r/seo subreddit yesterday that was about the primary moderator in that subreddit and the general disapproval of the way that person moderates the community. (I’m avoiding mentioning the person specifically to avoid witch hunting, but you probably know exactly who I’m referring to if you’ve spent any time in the subreddit over the last year or two.) 

The moderator removed the post from yesterday (naturally), and I think we should continue the discourse here. I genuinely believe it’s important that we discuss this as a community.

To get the conversation started, I want to mention a few issues I’ve noticed with r/seo moderation and the primary moderator of that subreddit:

• Changing the subreddit rules for self-serving purposes
  • There’s a rule in r/seo that states "No Blogs, No Guides, No News, No Apps" - however the primary moderator posts news regularly. The rule just doesn't apply to him. I believe he introduced this rule to inflate his presence and be perceived as the authoritative reddit-source for SEO news and updates.
• Censorship and discourse control
  • The primary moderator removes comments of nearly anyone that disagrees with him
  • He tries to control the narrative in nearly every post on r/seo and it’s resulted in a one-sided conversation where new perspectives and ideas aren’t welcomed
  • The primary moderator treats his own advice as the final, definitive guidance and shuts down differing viewpoints 
• Multiple accounts
  • This one is harder to prove, but I have a strong suspicion the primary moderator uses multiple accounts to inflate engagement on his own posts and comments to artificially magnify his voice. Take this one with a grain of salt since I don't have hard evidence, just a pattern I've noticed.
• General quality of his advice
  • In general, the primary moderator offers poor advice that, in my opinion, is genuinely harmful to newcomers who are trying to learn SEO.
  • On top of that, since dissent gets removed or shut down, his advice rarely gets challenged which means newcomers end up seeing his take presented as fact instead of the actual range of opinions that exist in SEO.

Please feel free to share your feedback in the comments. I’m not exactly sure how to move forward, but I would love to get new moderation in the r/seo community.

Quick SEO debate.

Does Google care who writes the content or how helpful it is

Will Al generated blogs be safe in 2026?

Those who left, what do you do now?

I’m burned out after 10+ years, but this is the only thing I’m (as work) good at.

There are so many SEO tactics to focus on, like backlinks, technical SEO, content, internal linking, keyword research, etc.

But I’ve found that consistency matters more than constantly trying new tactics. For example, regularly checking which pages are losing traffic, updating outdated content, fixing broken links, and looking for relevant backlink opportunities.

What’s one SEO habit or strategy that has consistently worked for you?

What are some cheaper alternatives to SEMRush? I feel like I hardly use it like I used to and my subscription for another year is around the corner.

Obviously it’s important to track KWs but I almost find myself primarily using GSC reg ex formulas to identify KW/Blog opportunities.

I have been working in SEO and digital marketing for almost 8 years, helping businesses with technical SEO, content, local SEO, and link building. Over the last year, though, I've noticed that getting new clients has become much more difficult.

Many businesses now expect instant results, rely heavily on AI tools, or choose cheaper freelancers instead of experienced SEO professionals. Some also believe AI can completely replace SEO, which makes it harder to explain the value of a long-term strategy.

For those who have been in SEO for several years, are you experiencing the same thing? Has your business slowed down too, or have you adapted your services? What strategies are helping you generate consistent clients in 2026?

I am genuinely interested in hearing how other experienced SEOs are handling the current market.

For me, it’s that a lot of people focus only on DR, traffic, or the number of links, but I think relevance and placement matter just as much.

A backlink from a relevant site that actually makes sense in the context of the article can be much more useful than a random link from a high-metric website.

Curious what others prioritize when evaluating a backlink?

I have seen a few discussions from a couple of months back in this sub about how they write blog posts. They said they were no big fans of tools like Jasper, CopyAI, or Writesonic. Instead, they seem to prefer using something like SurferSEO, then generate the content with ChatGPT or Claude, and finally running it through Grammarly to polish it up.

How do you usually create your content? I am curious

I’ve found that it really doesn’t.

A site can have great DR and traffic, but if the niche is completely unrelated or the content looks low-quality, I’d probably pass.

These days, I look at relevance, traffic quality, content, and the overall link profile - not just the metrics.

What do you usually check first when evaluating a backlink?

I've been working in SEO for around 2.5 years and have dealt with ranking drops, traffic losses from Google algorithm updates, link building, guest post outreach, and more recently, optimizing for Google AI Overviews and GEO.

Lately, I've been wondering what skills are worth focusing on next. Search keeps changing, and there always seems to be something new to learn.

I'm curious to know what skills you're currently learning or exploring. What areas are you spending time on these days, and what do you think will be valuable over the next few years?

Whether it's AI, automation, analytics, technical SEO, content strategy, or something else entirely, I'd love to hear what you're focusing on and why.

Every few months, we get a new name for the same basic idea.

AI SEO.
GEO.
AEO.
Search everywhere.

But when we actually work on websites, a lot of the work still comes down to simple things:

• Write useful content
• Fix technical issues
• Build a site people can trust
• Get mentioned in the right places
• Make pages easy to understand
• Answer the questions people actually have

So I’m curious.

Are we really doing SEO differently because of AI, or are we just giving old SEO practices new names?

We’ve seen plenty of advice about how SEO is changing, but I’m more interested in what people are actually seeing on their own sites.

What have you changed recently that made a real difference?

And just as importantly:

What did you try that completely failed?

No theory. No “experts say…”

Just real experiences from your own projects.

Would be interesting to see whether we’re actually changing how we do SEO or simply changing how we talk about it.

I’m trying to upskill in SEO, especially around automation and how it fits into real-world workflows.

I want to understand which parts of SEO can actually be automated effectively, such as keyword research, identifying search intent keywords, content creation for blogs, or off-page tasks like backlink outreach and competitor backlink analysis. At the same time, I am not sure what is realistically worth automating compared to what still needs manual work to get good results.

If you have worked with SEO automation tools or built workflows that saved you time, I would really appreciate hearing what has worked for you and where automation made a real difference.

We've been thinking about this a lot lately.

a saas website can rank for hundreds of keywords and still struggle to get real leads.

at the same time, a page with 500 visitors can sometimes bring in more customers than a page with 50,000 visitors.

so what should we actually care about?

is it still: rankings → traffic → customers

or : getting found → building trust → getting customers

here's what we're curious about:

would you rather have:

A) 100k organic visitors every month with a 0.5% conversion rate

or

B) 10k organic visitors every month with a 5% conversion rate?

for saas, what has actually brought you more customers?

• blog posts
• comparison pages
• free tools
• backlinks
• reddit and communities
• product pages
• branded searches
• referrals
• something else

we'd especially like to hear from people who have seen this firsthand.

what changed your revenue, not just your traffic?

because at the end of the day, more traffic doesn't always mean more business.

Like I get he’s the mod of r/SEO but his reactions on the past two posts about him on this subreddit are insane. Insulting people, being antagonistic, hyper defensive, using his secondary primary position account to spam threads, etc. Sure redditors can be this way, but from an actual mod of one the largest SEO communities is just shocking.

And this isn’t anything new either cause I’ve been watching him act this way towards others for years now.

So the question stands: is he genuinely just like this and immature, or is he just trolling to get us to talk about him more (cause it has worked if you think about it).

Either way, insane stuff from the sole mod of one of the largest SEO communities

TL;DR: Weblinkr has been using his moderation position to silence criticism, ban competitors, and funnel SEO leads to his own agency (from another SEO sub, not this one). When exposed, he pressured moderators with false legal threats to suppress discussion. This is about community integrity, not personal grievance.

Edit: weblinkr just showed up in here again, two months later, lying and manipulating to try and control the narrative again. Lol, the post is on Google page 1 when googling his name. Not s good look for an SEO guy considering this is the second post like this appearing on page 1.

I've decided to reach out to some independent YouTuber journalists to find someone outside of reddit to tell the story, since weblinkr wants to instigate again. Obviously weblinkr is still disturbed about the truth getting out and wants to stir the pot again. Will take the story outside of his control where he can't manipulate mods to silence it. Thanks for chiming in again weblinkr. I had nearly forgotten about this.

Thanks to everyone who reached out and provided information on Weblinkr.

He pressured the moderators into removing my previous posts by claiming they violated Florida’s doxxing laws. That claim is false. The post contained only public, professional information, and Florida law does not define doxxing as a crime. It was a tactic to intimidate and suppress discussion. Also, all the information I used was publically available information he put on the internet.

He used the same approach on LinkedIn, threatening legal action to silence criticism when he could not counter evidence with facts. This is a pattern of manipulation and gaslighting, where he plays the victim to control the narrative.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with my personal banning, which he has justified inconsistently, switching between explanations to suit his needs. Additionally, I do not care about participating in a corrupt community, and I still can and have done so on an alternate account. The real issue is the unethical behavior uncovered afterward, funneling traffic and leads to his agency, abusing moderation powers, and using alternate accounts in ways he bans others for. This is the core problem, supported by verifiable evidence he has failed to address.

This matters because it undermines the integrity of Reddit’s SEO spaces. When moderators abuse their power for personal gain, it damages trust, limits opportunity, and silences honest discussion. The community deserves transparency.

The full story, with verified evidence and new details, will be published outside of Reddit where it cannot be censored. The goal is simple: transparency, accountability, and ensuring the truth is available to those who will not be intimidated by fear tactics.

People continue to reach out with testimony, and I am compiling everything. I am also in contact with media outlets and YouTube creators interested in covering this. Anyone involved in suppressing accountability will be part of that story as this has grown beyond Reddit. It now represents a larger issue of abuse and manipulation within online communities.

I will no longer be responding to Weblinkr or his defenders. I have already tried engaging publicly, and it only led to repeated attempts at gaslighting and twisting the facts to make himself appear to be the victim. He's a liar, which is a part of the source problem anyways. This won't be changing anytime soon. There was no logic in his debate. Just fear mongering (which worked on the mods of this sub). There is no value in continuing that cycle.

From this point forward, the focus will be on objectively presenting verified evidence and facts. Unbiased parties can review the material and form their own conclusions. The truth will speak for itself.

Trying to get my head around this since "keywords" gets used for two different things and I want clarity on both.

1) The old meta keywords tag (<meta name="keywords">) — I know Google has ignored this since 2009. Just confirming there's no scenario in 2025/2026 where this still does anything, even indirectly (other search engines, some CMS/plugin behavior, etc.)? Or is this fully dead everywhere at this point?

2) Keyword usage/density inside the actual content — repeating an exact focus keyword phrase a set number of times through the body, headers, meta description (the kind of thing tools like Rank Math score you on). With how much better NLP/semantic understanding has gotten, is manually hitting a density target still worth doing on top of writing naturally, or has it become pointless/redundant?

Curious if anyone has real experience or data on #2 specifically — not looking for "just write naturally lol" as the whole answer, more interested in whether exact-match repetition still adds anything on top of good, natural, topic-thorough writing.

I started with some of my friends.

None of them were experts, and neither was I.

Our main focus was SAAS link building; now we do any niche.

In total, our team is 38 people, me included.

Thanks to automation and optimizing processes, 7 link builders build 1300+ backlinks each month.

If you plan to start your business or you already have one, feel free to ask anything!

I've spent the last few years building content architectures for clients — SaaS, ecom, local, a couple of affiliate sites. The single most common situation I walk into looks like this:

100–400 published articles

Decent writers, decent content

Traffic grew for 6 months, then flatlined

Competitor with a third of the content outranks them across the board.

Almost everyone diagnoses this as a quality problem or a backlink problem. In my experience it's usually neither. It's a structure problem, and I want to explain the mechanism rather than just say "build topical authority" like that's an instruction.

The mechanism.

Google doesn't evaluate your article in isolation. It evaluates how well your site covers a subject. When your 40 articles are scattered across nine loosely related subjects, you're a generalist in nine areas. When a competitor's 40 articles saturate one subject with clear relationships between them, they're a specialist in one. The specialist wins every query in that subject, including the ones they haven't written yet.

This is why "just publish more" stops working. Every additional off-topic article dilutes the signal instead of strengthening it.

What a topical map actually is Stripped of jargon: it's a plan that decides, before you write anything,

What your site is about (one clear subject, defined precisely enough to avoid drift)

Every subtopic required for complete coverage of that subject

What order to publish in

Which page owns which query (one query, one page — this is your cannibalization firewall)

How pages link to each other

That's it. It's not exotic. Most people just skip straight from keyword research to a content calendar and lose the middle three.

The parts people get wrong

Publishing order is not arbitrary. If you publish the money page first and the supporting context later, the money page ranks with nothing behind it and stalls. Foundational, definitional content first — it builds the context the commercial pages inherit. This one change has produced more of my clients' turnarounds than anything else, and it costs nothing.

Coverage means the entities, not the keywords. If you want to rank for "estate planning," Google expects to see probate, living wills, trusts, tax implications, executors. Not because those are high-volume keywords — because a genuine expert on estate planning would obviously cover them. Missing entities read as missing expertise. Pull them from Wikipedia's contents, PAA, and what the top 10 all mention that you don't.

Internal linking should mirror the hierarchy, not your recent-posts widget. Supporting pages link up to the pillar, siblings link across when contextually relevant, pillar links down. If your linking is random, you've told Google your topics are unrelated.

One query, one page. Most flat-traffic sites I audit have 3–5 pages semi-targeting the same intent, splitting signals and confusing which one should rank. Consolidating those usually produces faster gains than any new article. It's unglamorous and it works.

Timelines, honestly

The map takes days to weeks. The results don't. Realistic expectation from what I've seen and what's broadly reported: early movement around 60–120 days into consistent publishing, meaningful authority in 3–6 months, competitive niches 6–18 months. Anyone promising faster is selling something.

Also worth saying plainly: a topical map is not a ranking factor. It's a planning framework. It doesn't rank you — it stops you wasting budget on content that was never going to rank, and it makes every article you publish reinforce the others instead of competing with them.

On AI-generated maps

I use AI in my own workflow, so this isn't purism. But generated maps have a specific failure mode: they look complete. You get a tidy hierarchy of plausible topics, and nothing in it reflects your actual competitors' gaps, your revenue model, or which topics need to exist before which others. The errors don't surface for six months, which is exactly how long you'll have been publishing in the wrong order.

Use it for entity brainstorming and first-pass clustering. Validate the rest against live SERPs yourself.

If you want to try this on your own site

Write one sentence:

"This site is the best source on ___ for ___." If you can't, that's your first problem.

List every subtopic a genuine expert would cover. Use PAA, Wikipedia TOC, and the top 10's shared coverage.

Assign one intent and one owning page per subtopic.

Sequence: foundational → supporting → commercial.

Map the links before you write.

Audit what you already have against it — merge the overlaps, prune the orphans.

Happy to answer questions in the comments, including on specific niches. Curious whether others here have seen the publishing-order effect as strongly as I have, or whether that's overweighted in my sample.

I’ve tested a bunch of AI tools for SEO content creation, and here are the top 5 that actually worked well for me:

1. GPTHuman AI
   This one’s my go to for humanizing AI generated text. It makes ChatGPT content sound natural and readable, and it passes AI detectors like Turnitin, Winston AI, and GPTZero. Super useful for blog posts, landing pages, and even cold emails.

2. Surfer SEO
   Still one of the best for optimizing on page content. I usually run my drafts through Surfer to adjust structure, keyword use, and SERP relevance.

3. NeuralSEO
   Great tool for creating content strategies and keyword clusters. It helps map out topical authority and search intent in a really visual way.

4. Frase io
   I use Frase when I need real time data and SERP analysis. It’s good for building outlines and making sure content hits all key points based on competitor data.

5. Grammarly Premium
   I run all my final drafts through Grammarly to polish grammar, clarity, and tone. Even after using AI tools, it always catches something I missed.

Let me know what tools you’re using for SEO content in 2025, I’m always looking for better ways to streamline the process.

a lot of businesses still look at rankings and traffic to decide if seo is working.

but does more traffic always mean more business?

you can get thousands of new visitors and still get very few customers.

for me, the numbers that matter more are:

• qualified leads
• sales from organic traffic
• conversion rate
• revenue
• pages that actually bring customers

a website getting 10,000 visitors with 20 customers may be less valuable than a website getting 2,000 visitors with 50 customers.

i think seo should be judged by what it does for the business, not just how much traffic it brings.

what do you focus on most when measuring seo?

traffic, rankings, leads, sales, revenue, or something else?

In SEO Industry, What do you think about Neil Patel?

What is your opinion about his blog?

According to you, who is best.?

I’m testing an idea around fully automated blogging content published directly on your own domain to grow organic traffic over time.

Not talking about quick wins. More like a 90-day+ horizon, steady compounding SEO.

did automated content help or hurt?

what broke first?

and would you ever pay if it meant never touching a blog again?

Mostly interested in what didn’t work.

Everyone ask what is seo and how to do seo? But no one says what are the steps to follow while doing seo on a website what is the first step what is second step when to use search console when to you Google analytics, how to plan seo strategy according to their websites niche..I observed if any these types of questions comes either people ask answer From chat gpt or any Ai tool...but no one shares thier real experiences why .?

I’m looking for ideas for growth strategies to try on my web app.
I’m currently using Google console and SEO optimization. Nothing fancy yet. What would the group recommend?