AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year, I was managing an e-commerce client with over 3,000 products who was getting virtually no organic traffic despite following every "best practice" SEO guide on the internet. Their technical SEO was perfect, their content was "optimized," and they had all the right plugins installed. Yet they were stuck at less than 500 monthly visitors.
That's when I realized something crucial: most SEO advice is based on correlation, not causation. Everyone talks about the same 200+ ranking factors, but nobody tests what actually moves the needle in real businesses. After implementing my contrarian approach focused on just 5 core ranking factors, we scaled that store from 500 to 5,000+ monthly visits in 3 months.
Here's what you'll discover from my real-world experiments:
Why 90% of ranking factors are just noise (and the 5 that actually matter)
The AI-powered content strategy that outperformed traditional SEO writing
How I built 20,000+ pages across 8 languages without penalties
The single technical change that had more impact than months of link building
Why starting with keywords research is backwards (and what to do instead)
This isn't another recycled list of ranking factors. This is what actually worked when I tested it on real businesses with real money on the line. Let's dive into the website optimization strategies that actually move the needle.
Industry Reality
What every marketer thinks they know about ranking factors
If you've read any SEO guide in the last decade, you've probably seen the same advice regurgitated everywhere. The industry has created this mythology around ranking factors that sounds impressive but rarely translates to real results.
Here's what the "experts" typically recommend:
Technical perfection first - Fix every crawl error, optimize every Core Web Vital, make sure your schema markup is pristine
Content optimization - Hit exact keyword density targets, include LSI keywords, write 2000+ word articles
Link building campaigns - Guest posting, broken link building, digital PR to get high-authority backlinks
On-page optimization - Perfect title tags, meta descriptions, H1-H6 structure, internal linking
User experience signals - Reduce bounce rate, increase dwell time, optimize click-through rates
This conventional wisdom exists because it's measurable and gives people something to "fix." SEO agencies love selling audits that find 47 technical issues to resolve. It feels productive.
But here's the uncomfortable truth I discovered: most businesses spending months perfecting these factors see minimal ranking improvements. They're optimizing for Google's 2015 algorithm while missing what actually matters in 2025. The real ranking factors aren't the ones getting talked about in every SEO blog - they're the ones that directly impact how Google's AI systems understand and value your content.
The problem with following conventional SEO wisdom is that you end up playing the same game as everyone else, trying to optimize for hundreds of factors while your competitors are doing something completely different - and winning.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I took on that e-commerce client with 3,000+ products, they had already tried the traditional approach. They'd hired an SEO agency that spent months fixing technical issues, optimizing meta tags, and building "high-quality" backlinks. The result? Their organic traffic was still stuck below 500 monthly visitors.
The client was frustrated because they'd done "everything right" according to every SEO guide. Their site had a perfect technical SEO score, their content hit all the keyword targets, and they had decent backlinks. Yet their beautiful Shopify store was essentially invisible in search results.
That's when I started questioning everything. Instead of following the same playbook that wasn't working, I decided to run my own experiments. What if most ranking factors are just noise, and only a few actually matter?
I started by analyzing their existing traffic patterns and discovered something interesting: the few pages that were ranking well had nothing to do with perfect technical SEO. They were ranking because they solved specific user problems in ways that competitors weren't addressing.
This led me to a controversial hypothesis: Google's AI is getting better at understanding content value, which means traditional optimization tactics are becoming less effective. Instead of trying to game the algorithm, what if we focused on creating genuinely useful content at scale?
My first experiment was small - I created 50 product pages using an AI-powered workflow that prioritized user intent over keyword density. The results surprised everyone: these pages started ranking within weeks, while the "perfectly optimized" pages continued to struggle.
That's when I knew I was onto something. The traditional approach wasn't just ineffective - it was actively holding us back by making us focus on the wrong things. I needed to completely rethink what organic ranking factors actually matter in the age of AI search.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After my initial experiment showed promising results, I decided to go all-in on this contrarian approach. Instead of optimizing for 200+ ranking factors, I focused on just 5 core elements that I hypothesized would have the biggest impact on modern search algorithms.
The 5 Real Ranking Factors That Actually Matter:
1. Content-Search Intent Alignment
Instead of keyword stuffing, I built an AI workflow that analyzed the actual search intent behind each query. For every product page, we created content that directly answered the user's underlying question, not just included their search terms. This meant some pages had zero exact keyword matches but ranked better than perfectly "optimized" competitors.
2. Semantic Content Architecture
I created a content structure that helped Google's AI understand the relationships between different product categories. Rather than isolated pages, we built a semantic web of interconnected content that demonstrated topical authority across the entire product catalog.
3. AI-Powered Scale Without Penalties
The breakthrough came when I developed a custom AI workflow that could generate 20,000+ unique, valuable pages across 8 languages. The key wasn't avoiding AI content - it was using AI to create genuinely helpful content that humans would actually want to read.
4. User Experience as a Ranking Signal
Instead of obsessing over Core Web Vitals scores, I focused on actual user behavior. We redesigned the homepage to show 48 products directly instead of traditional "featured collections" sections. This counterintuitive change improved engagement metrics, which Google interpreted as a quality signal.
5. Dynamic Internal Linking Architecture
I built an automated system that created contextual internal links based on user journey data, not just keyword relationships. This helped Google understand our site structure while improving user navigation - a win-win that traditional SEO approaches miss.
The implementation wasn't about perfecting every technical detail. It was about understanding how Google's AI actually evaluates content value and building systems that align with that logic. Within 3 months, we went from 500 to 5,000+ monthly organic visitors, and the growth continued from there.
AI Content Strategy
Using artificial intelligence to create valuable content at scale without triggering quality penalties
H1 Optimization
Adding store keywords before product names in H1 tags across all 3000+ products became one of our biggest SEO wins
User Intent Focus
Prioritizing what users actually want over what SEO tools say they want to read
Semantic Architecture
Building content relationships that help Google AI understand your entire site structure
The results spoke for themselves. Within 3 months of implementing this approach, we achieved:
10x traffic increase - From less than 500 to over 5,000 monthly organic visitors
20,000+ pages indexed - All AI-generated content got indexed without penalties
Multilingual success - The approach worked across 8 different languages and markets
Sustained growth - Traffic continued growing beyond the initial 3-month period
But the most surprising result was what didn't impact rankings. Traditional factors like perfect technical SEO scores, exact keyword matches, and extensive link building had minimal correlation with our ranking improvements. Instead, content usefulness and semantic relevance drove almost all our gains.
The single biggest ranking boost came from one simple change: adding our main store keywords before each product name in the H1 tags. This one modification, deployed across all 3,000+ products, transformed our overall site authority more than months of traditional optimization work.
What really validated the approach was seeing competitors continue to struggle with traditional SEO tactics while we scaled effortlessly. They were still chasing the perfect technical setup while we were capturing market share through superior content strategy.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After running dozens of ranking factor experiments across multiple client sites, here are the key lessons that changed how I approach SEO:
1. Correlation vs. Causation
Most SEO advice confuses correlation with causation. Just because high-ranking sites have certain characteristics doesn't mean those characteristics caused the rankings.
2. AI Changes Everything
Google's AI is getting better at understanding content value, which means traditional manipulation tactics are becoming less effective. Focus on genuine usefulness instead.
3. Scale Beats Perfection
Publishing 1,000 good pages will outperform 100 "perfect" pages. Traditional SEO over-optimizes individual pages while missing the bigger picture.
4. User Behavior Trumps Technical Scores
Google cares more about how users interact with your content than whether your Core Web Vitals are green. Optimize for humans first, algorithms second.
5. Intent Alignment is King
Understanding what users actually want when they search is more valuable than hitting exact keyword density targets.
6. Internal Architecture Matters More Than External Links
A well-structured internal linking system can be more powerful than expensive link building campaigns.
7. Context Beats Keywords
Google's AI understands context and semantic relationships better than exact keyword matches. Write for topics, not terms.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
SaaS Implementation:
Create programmatic content for every use case and integration
Build semantic relationships between features and user problems
Focus on search intent rather than feature lists
Use AI to scale content creation without losing quality
For your Ecommerce store
Ecommerce Implementation:
Optimize H1 tags with category keywords before product names
Create semantic product relationships through content
Build collection pages that align with search intent
Scale product descriptions using AI workflows