iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

And finally, a genuine thank you to Nick, Vicky, Faith, and everyone I've worked with at SEOTesting. It's been a place of huge growth for me, as a marketer and a person. Onwards. But first, coffee. ☕

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

If you're hiring for a Head of SEO, Organic Growth Lead, Senior SEO Strategist, or a marketing role with a strong SEO focus, I'd love to chat.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

I'm open to both agency and in-house roles. Agencies appeal to me because I thrive in collaborative, multi-brand environments and senior strategy conversations. But I'm equally excited by in-house roles where SEO is deeply embedded into product and growth.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Over the past few years, I've focused on: - SEO testing & structured experimentation - Turning organic search into measurable revenue - Content strategies tied to business outcomes - Speaking, workshops, and shaping how SEO is positioned

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

After an incredible nearly three years at SEOTesting, I’m now looking for a new opportunity in SEO leadership. SEO is where I do my best work, particularly at the intersection of strategy, testing, and commercial impact.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

6) WordPress SEO Yoast Rank Math 7) Local SEO BrightLocal Whitespark Moz Local

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

3) Technical audits Screaming Frog Sitebulb PageSpeed Insights 4) Content planning Keyword Insights AlsoAsked 5) Link intelligence Majestic

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

1) Proving impact + reporting SEOTesting Google Search Console Google Analytics Bing Webmaster Tools 2) All-in-one suites Ahrefs Semrush Moz Pro

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Instead of asking: “What’s the best SEO tool?” Ask: What job does this tool need to do inside our agency workflow? Here’s how I see the 2026 agency stack breaking down 👇

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

What SEO tools should an agency use? That’s rarely a “which tool is best?” question. It’s a systems + margin question. When you’re juggling 10, 20, 50 client sites, the real pain isn’t lack of data. It’s: • Manual work • Tool sprawl • Weak reporting • Proving impact so retainers renew

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Most mature teams don’t “rip & replace.” They unbundle. Full breakdown is in the next post in the thread.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

For keyword clustering & content briefs: 👉 Keyword Insights For all-in-one coverage, but a lighter stack: 👉 SE Ranking For technical SEO & crawling: 👉 Screaming Frog 👉 Sitebulb For AI visibility (GEO / AEO / LLMO / whatever we’re calling it this week 😅): 👉 Waikay

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Here are 9 serious Semrush alternatives, depending on the bottleneck 👇 For proving SEO impact & structured testing: 👉 SEOTesting For backlink intelligence & competitor research: 👉 Ahrefs 👉 Majestic For question research & topical expansion: 👉 AlsoAsked

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Semrush is powerful. No doubt. But “all-in-one” often means you’re paying for features you don’t fully use. So instead of asking: “What’s the best alternative?” Ask: “What problems are we actually trying to solve?”

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

“Should we replace Semrush?” That’s rarely a pricing question. It’s a strategic one. Most SEO teams don’t wake up wanting a new tool. They wake up needing to: • Prove impact • Improve workflow efficiency • Go deeper on links or technical SEO • Scale reporting without drowning in CSV exports 🧵👇

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

A two-step process, giving you a wealth of information about how you can make your content work better!

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

2️⃣ Content Evaluator Once you've extracted your fanned queries from our Query Fan-Out Generator, export the JSON and upload that to our Content Evaluator. We'll evaluate your content for you to tell you which queries have been covered fully, which have been partially covered, and where gaps exist!

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Beyond that, we'll also provide information about the user personas who search for those keywords, so you can write content for them and get the best possible results!

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

1️⃣ Query Fan-Out Generator Input your main target query, and our Query Fan-Out Generator will extract the "fanned" queries for that query, so you know exactly the talking points you need to cover within your article.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

I am a firm believer in never stopping to improve your content. That's why I'm a huge fan of some of the tools in SEOTesting's "Labs" section!

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

It sits on top of GSC (and GA4 when needed) to: - Track the changes that are made to your site. - Run time-based, SEO split, and LLM tests. - Standardize reporting across pages and sites. Less exporting. Less guesswork. More "here's what worked."

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Both tools are absolutely essential. But neither of them answers the question that you might be asked the most: "What changed, and did it move the needle?" That's the gap SEOTesting was literally built to fill!

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Google Search Console = SERP visibility and technical stuff. - Queries, pages, CTR, average position. All that good stuff. - Indexing, coverage, and technical issues. Google Analytics = Outcomes and user behavior. - Engagement - Events - Conversion paths

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

I'd be willing to bet that most of you following me use Google Search Console and Google Analytics every single day. So you're (hopefully) not confused as to what they do. But maybe you'd like to know more about how they can be used in perfect harmony! Here's a simple way to frame it:

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

The "takeaway" I keep coming back to: Enterprise SEO stacks are usually layered. ➡️ 1 suite for coverage. ➡️ 1 crawler for scale. ➡️ 1 rank tracker for accuracy. ➡️ 1 content tool for performance. ➡️ And something to prove impact!

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

7) Content optimization - AirOps - Surfer - Clearscope - MarketMuse

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

6) Rank tracking specialists - STAT Search Analytics - AccuRanker - Advanced Web Ranking

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

5) Crawlers + technical SEO at scale - Screaming Frog SEO Spider - Sitebulb Cloud - Lumar (formerly Deepcrawl) - Botify

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

4) Enterprise SEO platforms (exec reporting + governance) - BrightEdge - Conductor

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

3) Market + competitor intelligence - Similarweb

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

2) "All-in-one" suites (broad coverage) - Ahrefs - Semrush - Moz - SE Ranking

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

1) First-party performance + reporting (Google/Bing data) - SEOTesting - Google Search Console - Google Analytics - Bing Webmaster Tools

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Enterprise is different. You're dealing with: ➡️ Multiple domains/markets. ➡️ Constant releases. ➡️ Tons of stakeholders. ➡️ And "prove impact" pressure every single month. So you end up needing a stack, not a single platform. Here's how the best enterprise SEO tools stack up:

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Enterprise SEO has a tool problem! 😅 Not because there aren't enough tools, but because most "SEO stacks" were built for: ✅ 1 site. ✅ 1 team. ✅ 1 set of goals.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

That's why I'm a big fan of pairing log analysis with LLM referral data, even with how messy referral data from LLMs is! I'd love to see this same test repeated and paired with LLM referral data! 👀

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

I guess the real follow-up questions should be: 👉 Are those pages getting traffic from LLMs? 👉 Which page types benefit the most from freshness? 👉 Does daily updating change visibility, not just crawl behavior?

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Certainly a very interesting signal to look at! Seeing ChatGPT-User crawls is definitely useful, but does it paint the full picture?

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

About a week ago, @pelogia.bsky.social shared an interesting experiment: He took ~10k pages and started updating their main content daily. What happened next? 📈 A few days later, ChatGPT-User bot activity jumped. 📈 And it stayed consistently higher than it was before.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

ChatGPT "likes" fresher content/data? I'm not sure whether this was a hot take to begin with, but it does look more like a pattern!

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

All from taking (probably) 30 minutes in total, from spotting the gap and adding in the content. It's (still) all about finding what works, and doubling down! :D

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

So we added it! What happened? - Clicks per day to the article are up 200%. - Impressions per day to the article up 834%. - The page ranked for more queries.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Back in September, we added a new section to one of our blog posts. This new section came about from checking which queries the content was ranking for and realising we were getting lots of impressions on a certain subject, but the blog post itself didn't meet the needs of that audience.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

I still very much believe that SEO doesn't need to be too complicated.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Having this data is super handy, and then you can combine it with GSC data and a RegEx looking for certain length queries and patterns to figure out what those prompts might be.

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Ryan Jones @ryanjonesseo.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Inside the Labs section of SEOTesting, we've got an LLM Log Analyzer that picks out the user access logs related to RAG/search agents and LLM training. ChatGPT-User, for example, is requesting pages on our site 3,500 times a day! 🤯

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