Recent thinking.
Notes written from live advisory work, published when there is something worth saying.
Working notes from live advisory engagements.
Everything published here starts as a question from a live engagement, something a client, a board or a buyer actually asked, answered at enough length to be useful to the next person asking it. Nothing is written to hit a publishing schedule.
The subjects follow the work. Recent notes cover how fractional CMO arrangements are priced and where they go wrong, and how AI engines decide which brands to cite. Others deal with measuring marketing performance independently of the people reporting it.
Each article is kept factual and attached to the area of the practice it supports. Where an article makes a claim, the claim is either mechanical (explainable from how the systems work) or drawn from engagements Sam has run. Articles are kept up to date. When something material changes, the article is reviewed and marked accordingly.
Published so far.
AEO vs GEO vs SEO: what actually changes, what doesn't
AEO, GEO and SEO compared plainly: what each optimises for, where the work overlaps, and when the distinction actually matters.
ReadHow to audit your own AI search visibility
A repeatable DIY method for auditing AI search visibility across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot, covering query selection, scoring and cadence.
ReadContent architecture: why some sites rank and most blogs don't
Why most blogs never rank. Topic clusters, hub-and-spoke architecture and internal linking discipline, with a real site as the worked example.
ReadDigital PR in the AI era: links still matter, citations matter more
Digital PR built links, and AI engines read the same coverage as corroboration. Why quality, original data and consistency do more than volume.
ReadE-E-A-T in practice: what authority signals actually look like
What E-E-A-T actually is per Google's documentation, what each letter looks like on a real site, and why it matters more for AI citation than for ranking.
ReadEntity SEO: Google has to know who you are before it ranks you
What an entity is, how Google and AI engines assemble one, why entity gaps quietly suppress rankings and citations, and the sequence for fixing yours.
ReadWhat does a fractional CMO cost in Australia?
What a fractional CMO costs in Australia. Current market day rates and retainer ranges, and how they compare with a full-time CMO's fully loaded cost.
ReadFranchise SEO: ranking fifty territories without fifty duplicate sites
Franchise SEO as architecture: one domain or fifty microsites, location pages that earn their existence, and how AI answers treat franchise networks.
ReadHow AI Overviews choose which brands to cite
Inside the mechanics of AI Overviews. How Google assembles a generated answer, and the signals that decide which brands get cited in it.
ReadHow mortgage brokers get found in 2026: search, AI answers, aggregators
The three surfaces borrowers use to find a broker in 2026, which are local search, AI answers and aggregators, and why broker SEO comes down to local, entity and review discipline.
Readllms.txt, schema and the machine-readable brand
What llms.txt actually is, what JSON-LD schema does, and how to build the machine-readable layer of a brand in a practical implementation order.
ReadLocal search for multi-location brands: Google Business Profile at scale
Managing Google Business Profile across multiple locations: profile ownership, access control, reviews at scale and territory-level measurement.
ReadTechnical SEO in the AI era: what still matters, what stopped mattering
The honest technical SEO split: what still matters mechanically in the AI era, what stopped deserving budget, and the new items the old checklists miss.
ReadMeasuring organic in a zero-click world: what replaces traffic as the KPI
What replaces traffic as the organic KPI. A three-layer measurement stack of presence, click quality and business outcomes for a zero-click search world.
ReadThe authority flywheel: how brands become the answer AI engines give
Why authority compounds in AI search. Cited brands get discovered, discovery earns corroboration, and corroboration earns more citation. The loop, defined.
ReadWill the model cite you? A framework for AI search visibility
A four-factor framework for AI search visibility: content structure, entity clarity, authority signals and consistency of facts, and how to apply it.
ReadZero-click search: what AI answers are doing to website traffic
What zero-click search means for website traffic: the measured decline, who loses clicks first, and why presence in AI answers now matters more.
ReadLet’s talk about what’s next.
For executive advisory, fractional CMO, AI search strategy or speaking enquiries.
sam@sampark.com.au